


Boarding School

by iangallagh3r



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Military, Boarding School, Gallavich, M/M, Military School, ROTC, Shameless, Slight OOC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-02-05 10:17:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 24,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1814968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iangallagh3r/pseuds/iangallagh3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU! Instead of getting sent to juvie for the 6th time, Mickey Milkovich is shipped off to military school for 2 years. There, he meets his roommate, Ian Gallagher, who is a model student and is completely obsessed with ROTC. The two could not be more different; and quite frankly, cannot stand one another. </p><p>Living together is going to be fucking crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ultimatum

Mickey was fucked, simple as that.

His palms were sweating and his knees were quivering as he approached the court room doors. He knew this place all too well; he was here far too many times in the last few years. However, it never intimidated him before, since he generally just got off with a warning or a quick stint in juvie for a few months. It was weird, but Mickey was beginning to enjoy juvie. He had made a few friends, made plenty of enemies (all of whom were afraid of him, which he loved) and was able to eat jello for almost every meal. He was comfortable in juvie, he was invincible in juvie.  He wished all his problems would be solved by spending some more time in there. However, he knew that was not the case this time, Mickey fucked up so badly that today he was going to be tried as an adult.

He was scared shitless as he entered the courtroom. Mickey was never scared, but the fact that today was the day he could go to **actual** jail made it a little bit harder for him to breathe. Mickey zoned out as he approached the stand, he didn’t want to be there and it would make things a bit easier for him if he simply pretended he wasn’t.

“Milkovich.” The judge called out, snapping him back to reality. It was his turn now, his fate was about to be decided. He stood up beside his public defender.

“This is your…. 6th offence in the last 2 years.” The judge shook her head. “However, I’m not really surprised by that. Your father _is_ somewhat notorious in this courtroom.” She flipped through his rather large file, and pulled out a document detailing the crime he committed.

“It says here that you stabbed a fellow student at your high school; a Mr. Thompson. When asked why you did this, you told the police that Mr. Thompson stole your jello….” The judge trailed off, confused, shocked and completely astonished at the same time.

Mickey craned his neck to look to the right of him, and saw the lanky, blonde kid the judge was referring to sitting at the plaintiff’s stand without a lawyer, but with someone from the government instead, which confused Mickey. He could see the bandages peeking out from underneath his shirt, and could tell how tired he was from the massive bags under his eyes. He glared at the guy, silently trying to scare him shitless. It worked. Nobody fucking messed with him, especially when jello was involved. The kid deserved what he got.

Mickey smirked and turned back to the judge in front of him as she continued on her spiel about how Mickey was a criminal, what his actions would result in for him, how he needed to stop hurting people, blah blah blah….  Mickey could care less what this bitch was rambling on about. He simply just wanted to know if he was going to jail or not.

“Mr. Milkovich, although I certainly do not tolerate violence of any kind, nor do I respect you at all for what you did to this young man, I do feel for you. You clearly have not had the best upbringing, and obviously did not have an upstanding parental figure to guide you and teach you right from wrong. So yes, I do truly understand why you turned out the way you did.” She paused.

“Now, I want you to listen to me and I want you to pay attention to what I’m about to say. Something you may not have known about this case is that Mr. Thompson has chosen not to press charges.”

Mickey slightly smirked. The kid was so afraid of him, that he didn’t even want to press charges and risk getting a beat down when Mickey got out of jail. Classic.

“I don’t know why he has chosen this, but he has, and he’s simply here today as a witness. However, because someone _was_ stabbed, the state had to intervene and is acting as the plaintiff. Because Mr. Thompson has chosen not to press charges, it allows me to go a little bit easier on you.  So… I don’t generally do this, but I want to give you an ultimatum.”

At this, Mickey’s ears perked up and his eyebrows rose. He was fully interested in what she had to say. Never had he expected that he wouldn’t have to go to jail, nor did he think he’d get a choice in the matter.

“You’ve been in juvie too many times now,” the judge continued, “and for people like yourself, I don’t necessarily feel sticking you in a cell again will change your behaviour or your way of thinking. So I’m giving you a choice. Either you can choose to go to jail, where you will spend a minimum of 2 years in a cell with other criminals, most of whom have committed _way_ worse crimes than you have and are much older and scarier. I know you think you’re tough, and that you have some sort of reputation you need to live up to because of your father, but I can see right through you. I’ve met other kids like you, and although you pretend to be a fearless hard ass, inside you’re just as scared as the rest of us.”

Mickey stayed completely silent and did not dare to look at the judge and confirm her theory, even though it _was_ somewhat true.

“Or you will be sent to a military boarding school for the remainder of your high school years. I have a friend who is the Dean at the Illinois Military Academy who, if I ask, will clear a room for you and enroll you for the next 2 years. It’s located in Springfield, only a 3 hour drive from here, and you will be allowed to come home for the summers, although you will be on probation for those 2 months. There you will learn not only how to be respectful and disciplined, but how to be a well rounded citizen and member of society. Plus, you will get to continue your high school education. I personally think this is a way better option for you, and I hope that you are not too proud or narcissistic to accept this offer.”

Mickey pondered long and hard about his options. The school didn’t seem so bad. Although it _was_ in the fucking middle of nowhere, and he’d actually have to attend classes now, there were a lot of positives to it. Fresh meat to prey on, guns and other various weapons he got to fuck around with, and the best part…. He’d be away from Terry and the rest of the shitty people in Chicago for 2 whole years. However, he didn’t want to pussy out and take the easy path. Mickey was not a pussy. He was tough, he was a thug, he was a Milkovich. He could totally handle 2 years in jail, couldn’t he?

Mickey slowly stood up, signalling his decision had been made, swallowing his pride for the first time in his life.

“School.” he said very quietly, somewhat ashamed of his choice.

 “Can you speak up please?” the judge asked.

“I’ll go to the fucking school”. He said. And with that, court was adjourned and Mickey was sent on his way to discuss the terms with his public defender and make arrangements for his move to Springfield.  


* * *

“You’re moving to fucking Springfield?!” Mandy shouted at Mickey, unable to believe what she just heard. She was completely shocked that he wasn’t sentenced to time in jail, yet somewhat sad that she wouldn’t get to see her brother until next summer. At least in jail she could go visit him if she wanted to, Springfield was 3 hours south of Chicago, and without a car, it would be close to impossible for her to get there.

“Yeah man, either that or a jail sentence. Juvie was cool and all but going to actual fucking jail would be a nightmare.” Mickey sat down on the couch beside his sister, pulling the school’s pamphlet out of his backpack, and handing it over for his sister to see. She yanked it out of his hand, flipping it open and quickly scanning through the pictures.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Mandy agreed, trying to assure herself and her brother that he made the right decision. “Your 5 foot 7, 120 pound ass wouldn’t last a day in there without some type of assault rifle or knife.”  She laughed.

Mickey laughed too, knowing that she was right. He was fairly confident in the choice he made, although he was not necessarily 100 percent happy with it.

After the court hearing, his public defender and the judge discussed with him all the rules of the Illinois Military Academy, rules that Mickey was _not_ happy with. Lights out was at 10 every single night, and wakeup call was at 6am. Each day would include 6 hours of school, 6 hours of military drills and athletic training and a whole 2 hours of free time to do as each young male pleases. Great. That wasn’t even the worst part, though. Mickey was set to live in a dorm with a roommate, Mickey did not do roommates. He could barely even stand living with his own family. The kid was probably going to be some rich, military obsessed douchebag who Mickey would end up kicking the living shit out of. This, of course, would result in him actually getting sent to jail. Fuck, he should’ve just picked the 2 years in the cell. What the hell did Mickey sign himself up for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, I was so nervous to post this. This my first AU, not to mention my first multchapter fic, EVER. So yeah, so nervewracking. I know Ian wasn't in this chapter but don't worry he's coming very soon!! Hopefully you all enjoyed it :) ALSO, sorry that the title is shit i'm literally THE WORST at creating titles oops.
> 
> I'm also posting this story on my tumblr, iangallagh3r.tumblr.com! Next chapter will be up soon!
> 
> Thanks again for reading it!


	2. The Roommate

The drive to Springfield dragged on longer than Mickey expected it to. He found himself looking at the time every 5 minutes or so, counting down the minutes until he could get out of this stuffy van. He rested his head on the glass window to the right of him, and closed his eyes. He thought about his goodbye with Mandy, only one hour ago. It had been short since his public defender was waiting outside for him so they could get on their way. He remembered hugging her tighter than he ever had before and she hugged him back just as tightly. Although in the past few years they may have fought a little and said some awful things to each other, Mickey loved Mandy and she loved him, although they would never say it out loud. They were each other’s best friends, confidants, and protectors when it came to Terry and their brothers. Mickey already felt a bit lost without her, and he had only been gone for exactly…. 68 minutes.

He opened his eyes reluctantly and lifted his head from the glass. After checking his phone for the time  _ **again,**_  (only 71 minutes had passed now), he looked up in front of him towards his public defender. Last week after his court date, the judge had told them both that his public defender would drive him up there, introduce him to the dean, and then be on her way. He wouldn’t see her for another 8 months until she was required to come and pick him up to take him home.

Knowing he still had another 107 minutes until he arrived at his new home (and school, gross), he pulled out a pair of headphones that he stole from his brother Iggy a couple of months ago, and shoved them into his ears. He closed his eyes once again, hoping that the next 8 months would go by quickly.

* * *

 

Before he knew it, Mickey was being shaken awake. He must’ve fallen asleep at some point during the car ride. He rubbed at his eyes, and sat up straight, looking at his public defender sitting in front of him.

“We’re here.” She said flatly, popping the trunk and hopping out of the van to help unload Mickey’s stuff.

Mickey stuffed his phone into his pocket, undid his seatbelt, and subconsciously fixed his hair before getting out of the car himself. He made his way over to the trunk, and started unloading his surprisingly small amount of belongings. Out of the corner of his eye, Mickey could see a man in a suit walking towards them. He was tall, probably around 6’1, had greying hair (more in a George Clooney way than an old man way), was surprisingly fit and somewhat attractive. By his appearance, Mickey concluded that he was the dean.

“Mr. Milkovich, I presume.” The man outstretched his hand to shake Mickey’s, who didn’t reach out to take it. Milkoviches didn’t shake hands.  
  
“At this establishment, it is considered extremely rude not to shake a man’s hand, especially the Dean’s.” the man glowered at him, dislike written across his face.

Mickey shook it reluctantly, turning back to the van to remove his last piece of luggage. Without a word of goodbye, or even a simple “see ya in 8 months”, his public defender shut the door to the trunk, got into the driver’s seat, and drove away.

“Let me help you with those.” the Dean said, picking up a few boxes labelled “stupid shit” and “more stupid shit”. The Dean eyed them, and simply shook his head.

“Let’s get to your dorm so you can unpack, shall we. Along the way, I’ll give you a quick tour of the campus and all our facilities.”

Mickey simply nodded, not really giving a rats ass about all the classrooms and science labs he was about to get a tour of. All he needed to know was where the food was kept, where the gym was and where he was gonna sleep, and that’d be enough for him to survive for the next 8 months.

“Oh, I completely forgot to introduce myself. I’m Mr. Rutherford, the Dean of this fine establishment.” The way the guy talked made him sound like a total douchebag.

“Mickey.”

“Ah yes, I know. I’ve heard a lot about you. My friend, Judge Morris, has shared some very colorful stories about you. I told her we generally don’t accept delinquents and criminals to our school, mostly only outstanding ROTC students and future military prospects. But, of course, I have made an exception for you, simply because she sounded extremely desperate and I had to help out a dear old friend.”

Suddenly, the Dean leaned in much closer to Mickey and the expression on his face hardened. “But let me tell you this, kid. You do anything to fuck up this school’s, and my own, reputation, and you will be very, very sorry.”

Mickey turned to glare at the old man. Was he fucking threatening him? Did he not know who he was? He let out an extremely loud laugh, which ended up sounded more like a howl.

“Is that a threat?”

“It sure is, kid.”

Yup, the guy was definitely a douchebag. Mickey was going to have one hell of a year.

* * *

 

After what seemed like an eternity of walking, they finally arrived at his dorm room. Mickey opened the door to find that one half was already decorated with furniture, little knick knacks, and posters of ROTC related crap. However, the room was spotless, not one thing out of its place. Mickey was an extremely messy and unorganized person, he already despised his roommate, and knew that the guy was probably going to hate him too.

“You’re rooming on the left, considering Ian’s already claimed the right. I wonder where he is right now, I wanted to introduce him to you. Anyways, your roommate’s name is Ian. He’s one of our most outstanding students, and the best in his class. He’s an ROTC prodigy, and we are so lucky to have him. I have high hopes that he will be a positive influence and role model for you.”

It’s like the guy was gay for this Ian kid or something. He went on rambling about how great and unbelievable he was for a long time, making it seem as though the kid was some kind of angel. When he was done talking about the guy, his face turned sour again.

“Unpack your shit, I’ll unfortunately be back later to give you your daily itinerary. Remember what I said, don’t fuck anything up Milkovich, or else.”

With that, the Dean turned his back on Mickey and left him to unpack. Instead, however, he decided to take a look through some of his roommates stuff, hoping to find some things he could steal, and maybe pawn for some extra cash. He started at the kid’s desk, finding nothing in the top drawer except some military magazines and school textbooks. Damn, this kid was a loser. On the desk was a picture of two girls, one brunette and around Mickey’s age, maybe a bit older, and the other was a ginger who looked 12 or so. He wondered if the brunette was the guy’s girlfriend. He quickly snapped out of his thoughts, and continued to look through the desk drawers.

“What the hell are you doing?” a voice drifted in from the doorway. Shit, Mickey didn’t know anyone was standing there. He quickly closed the drawer and turned around to face a tall redhead standing in the doorway. His heart rate sped up a little faster at the sight of the guy because, fuck, he was hot. He assumed this was his new roommate.

Mickey shrugged and bluntly replied, “Looking through your shit for something worthy to steal but, damn kid, you’re one boring motherfucker.”

The guy laughed slightly, in a completely baffled way rather than a happy way. He walked into the room and took a seat on his bed.

“I wasn’t told my new roommate was going to be such an asshole.”

“Yeah, and I wasn’t told  _my_  roommate was going to be such an annoying kiss ass.”

 The two boys just glared at each other, obvious dislike looming in the room. The redhead broke eye contact first, rolling his eyes at Mickey and pulling a book out of his bedside table. Mickey continued to unpack his stuff, no words being exchanged between the two boys for the remainder of the night. God, only a few hours in and Mickey already wanted to murder his roommate. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I just wanted to say thank you SO much for all the positive feedback and sweet comments on the first chapter. It literally made my day!! 
> 
> Secondly, I actually got asked a question on tumblr and figured I'd address it here because why the hell not! Personally, I have never been to boarding school nor have I been apart of the military or ROTC, so everything about this fic is completely new to me. I have researched SO MUCH about everything included in this fic to help make it more accurate and hope that it makes sense and is realistic enough :))
> 
> I'll update the next chapter soon! Thanks so much for reading it, it means alot. You can message me on tumblr anytime, if you'd like iangallagh3r.tumblr.com :)


	3. The First Day

Mickey awoke the next morning to a strong arm grasping his shoulder, shaking him ever so slightly. His eyes fluttered open, situating on the tall, redhead standing above him. The guy sighed before letting his features transform into a soft smile.

“Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot yesterday.” His roommate started. Mickey sat up in his bed, rubbing at his eyes and noticed it was still dark outside. He looked around his terribly messy room, boxes littering the floor since he still hadn’t unpacked everything. He glanced at the clock on their shared wall and noticed it was barely past 5 am. The guy literally must have been insane seeing as he was dressed and ready to start the day before the sun even fucking rose.

“My name’s Ian. Ian Gallagher. Anyways, I know I may have seemed like a bit of a prick yesterday, but I’m really not like that. I just want to help you, ya know? This place is so great and the ROTC training is crazy helpful……” The guy, who Mickey now knew was named Ian, rambled about how fantastic this shitty school was for what seemed like hours. Shit, he was like a miniature version of the Dean. No wonder the guy was obsessed with him.

Mickey snapped out of his thoughts and noticed Ian staring intently at him, as if he just asked a question and was waiting for an answer.

“What?” Mickey asked.

“I said, what’s your class schedule? Maybe we’ll have some classes together. I heard you’re a junior, and even though I’m only a sophomore, we have like a blended learning system so sometimes sophomores and juniors take certain courses together and stuff.”

All Mickey could do was laugh. The thought of having to spend  _more_ time than he already was with this rich little dickhead made him feel sick.

“Fuck you.” He said as he turned over to go back to sleep. “And don’t wake me up before fucking sunrise ever again.”

* * *

 

If the first day of class was any indication of how the rest of the year was going to go, Mickey would  **not** make it out alive. He was on break for lunch now, and was already over this whole place. Before lunch, Mickey had attended English, US History, Biology and Spanish class. Next, he was heading to Algebra, his least favourite subject, and then off to 6 hours of Military training. Fun. The worst part, however, wasn’t even the actual learning. It was the fact that Ian fucking Gallagher was already in 3 out of 4 of his classes, and with his luck, would probably be in his Algebra class too.

Mickey looked up from the table he was sitting at by himself, to across the cafeteria where Ian was sitting with a surprisingly large group of friends. They were animatedly laughing at him, some holding their chests and others wiping away tears as if he had just said the funniest thing in the whole world. Asshole.

He kept staring at him, intrigued as to how this know-it-all kid was so popular. Every few seconds or so, someone would pass by him and say hi or compliment him on something. He graciously smiled at each and every person, responding with hellos and thank yous. It was like he was a god at this school. How people could actually like him, let alone tolerate him, was not something Mickey could understand. Ian was good looking, there was no doubt about it, but he was such a kiss ass…. why did people think he was cool?

Suddenly, the bell rang, signalling next period was about to begin, and everyone in the cafeteria quickly gathered their stuff and shuffled to their designated classrooms.  All except Mickey. He took his precious time finishing his sandwich, emptying his garbage and taking a nice, long piss. By the time he was all ready to start class, he was 10 minutes late. And he did not give a single fuck.

He looked down at his class schedule, found his room number, and located it at the end of the main hall. Through the window of the classroom, he could see everyone taking notes and listening to the teacher ramble. He shoved the door open as loud as he could, not caring about interrupting the lesson, and burped as he entered the room.

The looks he received were completely priceless. Half of the guys in the class had their mouths wide open, completely shocked and stunned by his entrance, while others looked down at the floor in total fear. The teacher simply shook his head.

“You must be Milkovich.” He said, completely unamused. “I’ve heard about you. Take a seat at the back, and don’t be late again.” He was clearly annoyed, but that didn’t surprise Mickey at all. Teachers hated him, and he hated teachers.

As Mickey made his way to the back of the classroom, cracking his tattooed knuckles for dramatic effect, he took note of the only empty seat, which happened to be right beside the spawn of the devil himself. Mickey sighed, completely and utterly annoyed that this Ian kid was literally  **everywhere.** Couldn’t he just fuck off already? He dared not to look at him, and instead glared at the kid cowering in the other seat beside him. The kid stared harshly at his paper in front of him, silently willing himself not to look Mickey in the eye. Curiosity got the best of him, however, and he quickly looked over at Mickey, sizing him up, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

He did notice. Nothing got past Mickey. He glared at the kid, the fucker was asking for it. “Look at me again, and I’ll slit your fucking throat.” He sneered at him.

The boy’s eyes widened and he turned away as fast as he could. Mickey simply smiled to himself. The thrill he got from scaring the living crap out of others was indescribable. Others around him began to whisper, whispers that he knew were about him. The teacher was oblivious to all of this, however, as he was completely wrapped up in the formulas he was writing on the board.

Mickey tried to make out what was being said about him, but could only gather bits and pieces of conversations. Suddenly, Gallagher’s voice caught his attention. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see him talking to a blonde boy sitting in front of him, the kid barely turned around in his seat, appearing as if he was actually paying attention to the lesson. Mickey focused all of his attention on them, trying his hardest to hear what was being said.

“Jason looks like he’s gonna cry.” the blonde haired kid said to Ian. Mickey couldn’t tell if the guy felt bad or was about to laugh.

“I know, poor kid.” Ian replied to him, ever so quietly that Mickey could barely hear. “Mickey’s definitely got anger issues.”

Mickey almost dropped his pencil. That stupid bastard. Who did he think he was, going around telling people that Mickey had “anger issues”? The kid knew him for all of 5 minutes and suddenly he was acting like he was Mickey’s fucking psychiatrist or something. Sure, Mickey was angry a lot of the time, but he didn’t have fucking issues.

Mickey stood up, kicked his chair/desk over as hard as he could (for more dramatic effect of course) and stomped out of the room. He wasn’t going to sit around while Gallagher talked shit about him,  _right in front of his face._ He needed a fucking smoke.

He walked through the hallway, locating the closest exit. He pushed open the doors, breathing heavily out of pure anger, and lit a cigarette that he fished out of his pocket. He noticed a group of about 4 or 5 guys standing around near a brick wall to Mickey’s left, all smoking or drinking beer. They noticed him fuming, and stared at him for a while. Until one guy, a shorter guy with a massive tattoo on his left shoulder asked “you okay man?”

Mickey puffed out a huge cloud of smoke, instantly feeling better once the nicotine had hit his lungs. Cigarettes were lifesavers. He looked at the guy, simply responding. “I fucking hate Ian Gallagher.”

All 5 of the guys just looked at each other, silently deliberating how to respond to him. Suddenly, two of the guys clinked their beers together, and said “Cheers to that, my friend.” The rest of them raised their cigarettes in the air, signalling their cheers as well.

Looks like Mickey didn’t hate everyone at this school after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, thanks so much for all the wonderful comments and feedback. It really makes my day, and makes me even more excited to post the next chapter.
> 
> Hope you like this one! I'll post again soon!  
> message me on tumblr if you want! iangallagh3r.tumblr.com :)


	4. The Confrontation

Mickey ended up skipping the rest of his algebra class, and instead, spent his time chain smoking with his newfound friends. After the basic introductions and some small talk, Mickey found out that 3 of the 5 were also “delinquents” and had all been sent to the school as a form of punishment or instead of juvie. They said they were the only ones on campus who were forced to attend the school; everyone else was there by choice. Mickey immediately labelled this group as the cool people of the school. The other two guys, who Mickey found out were brothers, had pretty clean track records, but knew where to find good weed and booze, so were easily accepted into the group. The guys took to Mickey very quickly, and told him that they met up every day in this exact spot during meals and free time. They all exchanged numbers (Mickey especially wanted the brothers’ numbers so they could hook him up at any given time) and Mickey told them he had to go to training, since he had already skipped one class on his first day.

As he walked away from his new group of “friends”, he felt somewhat accomplished. He knew he wouldn’t be the only one on this entire campus who would rather drink and party all night than read a fucking textbook and fall asleep at 10pm. He was extremely glad he found them sooner rather than later.

For the training portion of the day, students were required to change into basic ROTC uniforms (they were allowed to wear normal clothing during the education part of the day). Mickey filed into the locker room and located his locker, a large piece of masking tape with a messily written “Milkovich” stuck to the door. He opened it, and pulled out the new uniform waiting for him. Considering he was a bit late, the locker room was completely empty other than him. He was pleased about this, as he now could change in private without having to worry about other dudes looking at him, not that he would mind though. He quickly changed, and left the locker room, following the signs posted through the gym pointing at the exit to the base camp. As Mickey stepped outside, he was somewhat shocked to find that the base was enormous and looked exactly like an actual army base. He had never seen a real army base up close, but it looked identical to the ones he saw on television and in movies. It was fully equipped with obstacle courses, a target range and multiple tracks to run on. He noticed a group of boys running drills off in the left corner of the base, and hurriedly made his way to join them. He saw his training instructor off to the side, whistle around his neck, telling the cadets what do. Beside him, a shorter boy was hunched over, facing away from Mickey, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t think it was fair that while all the other guys had to run and actually do shit, this guy got a break. There were so many kiss asses at this school and Mickey was beginning to get sick of it.

The cadets stopped, panting and breathing heavily, and were told to take a 3 minute water break. Mickey figured this would be a good time to talk to his TI, and figure out what the hell he was required to do today. Suddenly, the lazy kid turned, and Mickey found himself face to face with Ian Gallagher. Of fucking course.

He wiped some sweat from one of his brows, and grabbed his shirt, shaking it to air himself out a little. He noticed Mickey approaching, and quickly pulled him aside before he could even introduce himself to the TI.

“Look, did I do something to piss you off in Algebra? If I did, I’m sorry man.” He seemed sincere but Mickey wasn’t one for all that apology crap.

“I don’t have fucking anger issues, okay?” Mickey snapped, he didn’t want to deal with this right now.

Ian raised his hands up in defense, signalling to Mickey that he meant no harm and that he needed to calm down a bit. Mickey rolled his eyes, and headed towards the TI to tell him he was here and ready to get on with this military bullshit.

* * *

 

They had been at it for 5 hours now. At the 4 hour mark, every student had an hour dinner break, in which they gathered in the cafeteria to eat and then separated off with their friends to do whatever they pleased. At 7pm, they went back to their military training, and were required to be there until 9pm. It was around 8:00 now, and the boys were all being tested on the obstacle course to see how physically fit they were. From there, they would be broken into groups based on their skill level, and would be in these training groups for the rest of the year.

It was Mickey’s turn now to take his test. He had always been an extremely fast runner, and was incredibly skilled at dodging obstacles (if you considered bullets and knives as obstacles) so he figured this course would be an absolute piece of cake. As soon as the whistle blew, he was off. He whizzed through it with complete ease. Once he was finished, he bent over a little to catch his breath. He actually kind of enjoyed that; climbing ropes and crawling through mud, lifting or throwing heavy objects and shooting things were right up his alley.

The TI ran over to him, stopwatch in hand, and gave him a pat on the back. “Good job kid, you have the time to beat! Fastest time of your class, actually. Who knew?” He showed Mickey his extremely fast time, and with that, jogged back over to his station to test the next cadet. Mickey just stood there, not surprised that he was the fastest, but proud. Though he was shit at school and homework, he was apparently good at ROTC and that was enough. Mickey was not often the best, so this felt pretty good.

Mickey took a seat on the grass beside the course, watching other cadets do their tests. None of them appeared to even come close to Mickey’s time, which made him feel even more superior to them. He reached for his water bottle, and sprayed a little in his face and on his shirt, cause fuck it was hot outside. He sprayed a little into his hair, shaking it out as if he were a wet dog. Suddenly, he heard cheering coming from the end of the course. All the cadets were gathered around, patting someone on the back, shouting words of praise and clapping as loud as they could. Mickey got up and wandered over, wanting to know what all the fuss was about.

“Hey, kid?” he asked the closest cadet to him, a short guy a couple years younger than him. “Why the fuck are we all screaming?”

“Gallagher just beat the school’s record time!” the kid said excitedly. “Can you believe it?!”

Mickey rolled his eyes and pushed the kid as hard as he could. Not only did he want to get him out of his way, but the kid was a Gallagher groupie and that was annoying as fuck. The kid hit the ground with a hard “thump” and Mickey simply laughed. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Gallagher staring at him. People were hugging him and giving him high-fives, yet he was intently staring at Mickey.  Mickey gave him the finger, and turned away. However, Ian scrambled out of the crowd, calling Mickey’s name as he chased after him.

“Mickey! Wait up!” Ian said as he caught up to him. “I heard your time was the second best, congrats! For a newcomer, that’s huge to accomplish, ya know. ROTC isn’t a piece of cake and you clearly know what you’re doing….” He trailed off. He sensed that Mickey wasn’t into compliments, and stopped himself before he crossed a line.

“Look, if you want some help improving your time, I’d be happy to train you a bit? We can run the course together a couple of times; it’d make a huge difference.”

Mickey just gaped at him, astonished by the shit that came out of his mouth. Gallagher obviously thought he was above Mickey, better than Mickey. He wondered how many more stupid things this guy would say before he got his ass kicked. He wished he could stick a muzzle on him, like a dog, so he didn’t have to listen to him speak ever again.

Mickey was considering punching him in the face for being such an idiot, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to be kicked out on only his first day. Maybe in a couple of weeks or so.

“Don’t need no help,” He shrugged. “And just so you know, everything that comes out of your mouth is stupid and annoys the fuck out of me. I’d rather eat fucking glass shards and rusty nails than have to listen to anything else you have to say. Stop trying to kiss my ass, go back to kissin’ the dean’s ass okay?” To say Mickey did not have a filter was an understatement. That was the thing about Milkoviches; they said exactly what was on their mind, without thinking of the repercussions of it.

Ian was completely baffled. He wasn’t used to anyone hating him here, nor was he used to people talking to him like that. And he wasn’t trying to “kiss Mickey’s ass.” He was just trying to be nice. He blinked a couple times, and stuttered a little, trying to think of something to say back, but…. Nothing. He was literally speechless, so he simply turned around and walked away.

Mickey gathered up his shit, and stomped off to the locker room, hoping that would shut the kid up for good.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter was a short one! i'll hopefully post chapter 5 in the next few days; it's gonna be a messy one ;)
> 
> thanks again for reading, it means a lot to me! i'm so glad you all are enjoying it!!


	5. The Idea

It had been three days since Mickey’s confrontation with Ian. To say living together was awkward and uncomfortable for both of them was definitely an understatement. Not a single word had been said to one another in those 72 hours. The boys would sit in silence each night, Ian generally doing homework, and Mickey usually listening to Chief Keef or watching porn. Sometimes Mickey would catch Ian staring at him, hard and intent, complete and utter hate visible on his face. Mickey would stare back until one of them got tired and looked away. Eventually, it would get so uncomfortably quiet that one of the boys would leave, and not come back until later when the other was asleep. Mickey had only left once, secretly meeting up with his friends to smoke weed.

Mickey had been at the academy for almost a week now, and was finally becoming accustomed to where everything was located and what his daily schedule consisted of. He had a secure routine down, and was becoming more and more content with his life every day.

It was nearing the end of lunch on a Friday. Mickey and his group of friends were sitting around their usual spot, drinking beer (that was secretly concealed as soda) and relaxing, Mickey fooling around with a Swiss Army Knife. He heard a group of boys approaching, and stashed his “soda” and knife away just in case. Of course, it was Ian and his massive group of followers. They were walking in the direction of the gym, probably heading there early to change for training. He never understood why they would actually want to sit through their entire algebra class in those bulky uniforms, but then again, he didn’t understand half of the shit Ian did.

The tallest of the three delinquents shook his head, scoffing as Gallagher and his crew walked by. “God, I really hate that kid, ya know?” Everyone nodded in agreement, some voicing their opinions with a short “me too” or “same here”.

“At least you don’t have to bunk with him….” Mickey mumbled, “The guy is a nightmare.”

All 5 of his friends’ heads snapped up at once. Mickey hadn’t mentioned yet that his roommate was Gallagher, so this was news to all of them.  
  
“HE’S your roommate?” the brother with the glasses said, laughing incredibly hard. All of Mickey’s “friends” had originally introduced themselves, and told him their names, but he didn’t bother to remember them. Instead, he nicknamed them based on their traits, hence “brother with glasses”. He didn’t care enough about them to remember their names. Sure, they were cool dudes and he didn’t mind hanging with them, but Milkoviches never really did “friends”. He really only talked to them so he didn’t have to be alone  _all_  the time.

“Yeah, unfortunately.” He shrugged. “He thinks he’s entitled to everything, you know, because everyone here worships him. I hate it.”

“You should fuck up his life.” The delinquent with the nose piercing said, completely nonchalant.

“What do you mean? Mickey asked, willing him to elaborate.

“Ya know, like they did in that movie about the mean girls. Play pranks on him, ruin all of his stuff and mess up his reputation. Just fuck up his entire life.”

Mickey wondered why he didn’t think about that before. Sure, he was used to engaging in  _actual_ criminal activity, such as selling drugs and, well, stabbing people. And he had never really resorted to petty things such as pranks and stuff, other than to Mandy and his brothers. But the nose piercing guy actually had a good idea. It  _would_ be fun to fuck up Gallagher’s life. Besides, he hadn’t done anything illegal in a while and kind of missed the thrill, to be honest.

Mickey clapped his hands together, rubbing them as if he was a fucking evil scientist or some shit. “So boys, where do we begin?”  


* * *

 

Mickey decided to skip the second half of training that night. After eating dinner, he watched as everyone filled out onto the base, and then made his way back to the dorms. They were completely deserted and silent. It made Mickey feel at ease. There hadn’t been a moment of complete silence since he moved in, and sometimes, he just liked to listen to himself think. He pulled his room key out of the back pocket of his jeans, and opened the door to his and Ian’s shared room.

There was 2 hours until training was over, which meant Ian could come back at any given time after that. Mickey had to act quickly. He had trashed rooms (and sometimes full houses) before, when people hadn’t paid him their drug money that they owed. But the intent was never to a _ctually_ ruin everything, just to scare them into coughing up their cash. This time, however, Mickey was ready to destroy everything in sight. Mickey himself barely had any belongings, so it didn’t concern him that he might ruin some of his own stuff in the process. He began to flip all of the furniture in the room; the desk, chairs, television. He even debated flipping Ian’s bed, but decided against it, and left the bed alone. He emptied all the drawers in Ian’s desk and bedside tables, ripping pages out of every textbook and notebook he found and littering them on the floor. All the little knick knacks on Ian’s desks and dresser got knocked off and also ended up on the floor. Mickey then made his way into Ian’s dresser drawers, throwing his clothes around the room. He was emptying one of the middle drawers, when he picked up a black wifebeater that he noticed was in his size. He inspected it for a bit, decided he liked it, and quickly hid it under his pillow. The shirt was his now. He continued trashing the room until he was a bit out of breath, and had to take a drink break. He glanced at the clock, noting that he was making extremely good time, and finished demolishing their dorm. When he was finally satisfied with his work, he got on his hands and knees to look under his bed. He kept a secret stash of army knives, small weapons, drugs and extra cash under there. For some reason, he also had a couple of spray paint bottles. He grabbed one of them, shook it up a bit, and popped the cap off. He jumped onto Ian’s bed, and started writing on the wall in front of him. When he ran out of space on Ian’s wall, he decided to continue it onto his side of the room. He didn’t really care if his walls were fucked up too; it gave the room a certain sort of character. When he had finally finished, he put the spray paint back where it belonged, and stood in the very center of the room, admiring his masterpiece. The walls, which now read “Don’t fuck with me again, Gallagher” and some other choice words directed at the redhead, were completely filled, not a single space of white showing. Mickey grinned, pleased with his work and more than excited to see Ian’s reaction to his newly decorated room. Mickey sat on his bed, still with that shit-eating grin on his face, and waited for Gallagher to come back.

About an hour later, Mickey had gotten bored of sitting in complete silence, and decided to put his headphones in and listen to some music. He was bumping along to a rather upbeat rap song that Iggy had told him about, when the door slammed open and Ian walked in. He looked dead tired, huge bags under his eyes, and was extremely sweaty from training. Yet, Mickey couldn’t help but stare a bit because he looked fucking sexy. He silently cursed himself for thinking the bane of his existence was hot, and snapped out of his thoughts. Ian was looking down at his cell phone, and hadn’t glanced up yet to see the disaster awaiting him. Mickey smiled, a real big shit-eating grin, and stared at Ian until he glanced up and looked Mickey right in the eye.   
  
“Why the fuck are you staring at…..” he trailed off, finally noticing the state of his bedroom. His mouth dropped open a bit, and his eyes almost popped right out of his head.  

“Oh-oh my god!” he screamed, furious with his roommate. “What the fuck did you do to all my stuff? Everything’s ruined!” He picked some of his belongings up off the floor, softly examining them in his hand, with a sad look on his face. He looked at Mickey, a mixture of complete rage and despair painted on his face. He shook his head, no words coming out of his mouth, and sadly began picking up his stuff. At this, Mickey actually felt kind of bad. The kid looked extremely depressed. His defined features looking 20 years older than they did 5 minutes before. Ian walked around the room some more, deflated, picking up all the items he figured he could salvage.

He looked up to his wall, and noticed something that slipped his mind; the message on the wall. Suddenly, he was no longer heartbroken about the remains of his stuff. He was fucking infuriated. Ian tried so hard to be decent to his roommate, simply because he _did_ have to live with him for the next year. But he was over that completely, he was a Gallagher after all; they didn’t let people push them around. He turned to look at Mickey, rage visible on his face.   
  
“It’s fucking on, Milkovich.”

Mickey smiled that shit-eating grin again, the threat simply proving how much he got under Gallagher’s skin. He fucking loved that. He laid his head back on his pillow, extremely pleased with his work.  


You can take the kid out of the South Side, but you sure as fuck can’t take the South Side out of the kid. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this one.
> 
> And again, thanks for all the wonderful comments. It really makes my day whenever I read them :)


	6. The "Incident"

It had been 2 weeks since the day Mickey had destroyed all of Ian’s stuff. Since then, both boys managed to pull off quite a few pranks and fuck up parts of the other’s lives. They hated each other more than they could even describe by now, and had convinced all of their friends how rotten and evil the other was. They were in full out war-mode. Because of this, living together was absolute shit for both of them. They avoided spending time in their room as much as possible, Mickey with his friends and Ian with his.

There was one thing confusing Mickey, however. The room was still in shambles. Some stuff had been picked up off the floor and thrown in the trash, but Ian had replaced nothing. All his broken furniture was still there, and the walls were still covered in red spray paint. Mickey had no idea why he hadn’t purchased new stuff, or better yet, why he hadn’t told the Dean on him. Especially considering Ian was now limping around campus, sporting a sprained ankle. A couple of days ago, Mickey had snuck out to base before Ian’s one-on-one training session, and fucked with the course.  Surely, if the Dean found out what Mickey had done, he would kick him out immediately and his ass would get sent straight to fucking jail. But Ian hadn’t said a word, and instead told people he sprained it when he accidentally fell down the stairs, confusing Mickey even more. Instead of being a snitch, Ian was fighting back, and playing Mickey’s game. Mickey didn’t want to admit it, but the kid was actually good too. In the last 14 days, Gallagher had managed to give Mickey a black eye, quite a few nasty bruises and a dislocated shoulder, all without laying a single finger on him. The kid was secretly an evil genius, and Mickey had to give him credit for that. At one point, it kind of turned Mickey on. Seeing someone that attractive act so bad and well, “Mickey-like”, was hot. But he managed to push those thoughts out of his head and vowed  _never_  to think them again. He could not get distracted by Gallagher’s looks, he needed to win. Milkoviches always fucking won.

* * *

  
It was 6:35 on a Friday morning. Mickey was supposed to be awake more than half an hour ago, but was not awoken by his alarm. He set his phone to wake him up at 6am every day (like he was supposed to) but couldn’t find his charger anyways. He figured Ian hid it somewhere, and went to bed hoping his battery would last the night. It clearly didn’t. When he finally awoke at 6:40, his blue eyes fluttering open and adjusting to the tiny stream of light beaming in through the blinds, he looked at the bed beside him to see Gallagher was not there. He then looked to the clock on their shared wall and nearly lost it. The one thing in the world that he hated more than class and schoolwork was being late. He despised it for some reason. Considering he didn’t really like being early either, he made it his mission to be exactly on time for everything. He quickly pulled on a pair of sweats and the wife beater he stole from Gallagher, brushed his teeth and gelled his hair a little. He was out of the room in no time, racing towards the cafeteria with only 5 minutes until class started. Although he definitely didn’t have time to eat breakfast or anything, it was necessary that he got his morning coffee. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to survive the rest of his fucking day.

He rushed into the cafeteria, pushing in front of everyone in line so that he was the first. People gave him dirty looks and shouted some rather choice words at him, but he really did not give a shit. He needed his coffee. Now.

“Hey, Tony!” he shouted to the worker behind the cash. He was an older guy, maybe around 30ish, with stark black hair and a thick moustache, which did not flatter him one bit. He worked the breakfast shift every day, and knew Mickey’s order off by heart now. “Gimme my usual, and make it fast, I’m in a hurry.”

His coffee was whipped up in no time; two milks and two sugars, just the way he liked it. It tasted better when it was sweet. He quickly grabbed it out of Tony’s hand, practically threw his money at him, and bolted out of the cafeteria doors. Surprisingly, he made it to class on time, with a minute to spare. He took a seat in his regular spot near the back, and took out a notebook he stole off a freshman. The notebook was littered with everything  _but_ school notes; drawings, dates and times of importance, phone numbers he needed to remember, lists of things he needed to buy and even little stories he’d write during class instead of paying attention. While his teachers looked at him writing away, thinking they had changed him and made him a good student, he was still the same old fucking Milkovich.

He took a sip of his coffee, savouring the taste. The teacher began to take attendance, and was startled to see that Ian was not present. When Ian finally limped in 10 minutes later, slowly making his way to his desk, everyone was shocked. Gallagher, being the overachiever he was, was never late. Ever. Mickey wondered what held him up. Realizing he actually didn’t care, he went back to his drawings, and took a big, long gulp of his coffee.

Three hours later, Mickey was doodling away in Biology. He glanced up from his notebook briefly, to make it believable that he was actually paying attention, and noticed Ian sitting two rows in front of him, scribbling down notes as quickly as possible. Mickey resumed his drawing, until a few minutes later, when he suddenly dropped his pencil. He started to feel really odd, his stomach was rumbling in a very bad way. He put a hand on it, rubbing it a little and wondering what had caused this random ass stomach ache to occur. It went away momentarily, and Mickey went back to his doodling. But then it came back, even worse than it was previously. Before he knew it, Mickey felt like he was literally going to explode right there in his seat. He stood up quickly, clutching his stomach with one hand, and his desk with the other to stabilize himself.

“Is everything okay, Milkovich?” the teacher asked, calmly.   
  
“I, uh, I just need to go to the bathroom…” he said, quickly hurrying out of the classroom. Behind him, he could hear his classmates laughing, and his teacher yelling something about needing a hall pass. But he didn’t stop, out of complete fear that if he did, he would shit himself.

He finally got to the bathroom, after running as fast as he could. He literally felt like he was dying, and was clutching the toilet and the wall for dear life. After a couple minutes, Mickey heard someone enter the bathroom. He remained as still as he could, and made as little noise as possible. He could see legs making their way towards his stall, the left foot slowly dragging behind the right with a little limp. Suddenly, his door was slammed open, and there stood Gallagher, staring at Mickey in the stall, with a horrible grin on his face.

“How’s it hanging in there?” he smirked at him, laughing a little bit while leaning against the stall’s doorframe. “I’m pissed you made it on time… I was hoping you’d shit your pants a little.”

Mickey stared at him with wide eyes, realizing he set him up. He was so furious that he didn’t even care that Ian was staring at him while his pants were down. “Did you slip me a fucking laxative?” he nearly screamed.

Ian grinned. “Sure did, roomie! Well, technically I did. I paid Tony 50 bucks to put it in your coffee this morning.” He shrugged.

“You stupid fuck…” Mickey growled, literally about to stand up and jump Ian.

“Whoa, down boy! You may not want to stand up for the next little while or so, if you know what I mean.” He cackled loudly, as Mickey sunk back into the toilet, realizing the truth to Ian’s words. He was gonna be stuck there for quite a bit of time.  
  
“Have fun shitting your brains out!” Ian smirked, about to exit the bathroom, before turning back towards Mickey hesitantly. “Hey… are you wearing my shirt? I’ve been looking everywhere for that.” Before Mickey could respond, he dismissed him with a wave, and left the room. He was too overjoyed about the circumstance Mickey was in to even care if he had stole his shirt. He made his way back to class, practically skipping, awaiting for Mickey’s return (which probably wouldn’t be for a while). He sat through the rest of the class with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. It felt good to win. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to upload! I had such a busy week, and seriously had no time. Hopefully the next chapter will be up soon! This one was a bit of a lighter chapter but it's gonna start going somewhere soon, I promise :)
> 
> Thanks so much again for reading!!!


	7. The Battle

Mickey stumbled his way to the back wall where he usually hung out with his friends, rubbing his ass every once in a while. He was exhausted as he sat down on the pavement beside the brother who always wears capri pants. His shoulders slumped as he rested his head against the wall, closing his eyes and sighing loudly. It felt so good just to be able to relax for a little bit. He had a  _very_  rough morning. After finally getting out of the bathroom, he decided to skip Spanish class to go and have a little chat with Tony. He roughed him up a bit, scared him out of telling the dean, and told him not to fucking mess with him again.

When Mickey opened his eyes a few minutes later, all 5 of his friends were staring at him. “What the fuck happened to you?” the short kid with an arm tattoo asked.

Mickey shook his head, too pissed and tired to even share the story. Instead he decided to give the short version of his morning, and get straight to the point. “Gallagher slipped me a fucking laxative…” he trailed off, slightly embarrassed to admit this to his friends, who basically worshiped him. Their mouths dropped open wide, a few of them started to laugh quietly while the others were so shocked they couldn’t say a word.

“He made you shit your pants?” the brother with glasses questioned, trying his best to conceal his laughter.

Mickey glared at him in response. “No, you fucking idiot, I did not shit my pants….. I almost shit my pants.” All five of the guys broke out in complete laughter, some of them literally rolling on the ground. Mickey sat there, an extremely hard look on his face, hoping they’d all stop laughing soon. He knew this would be an ongoing joke for the rest of his time at school. Great.

While the boys continued to laugh, crack jokes, and think up new nicknames associated with “the incident” to call Mickey, he dedicated his time to brainstorming ideas on how to get Gallagher back. He couldn’t let him win. Mickey needed to come up with an idea so clever that Gallagher would be completely taken aback, so embarrassing that the redhead would not want to look his classmates in the eye. It had to be his best prank yet. Considering his previous pranks were already damn good, this was going to be very tough to come up with, but Mickey could do it. If only he dedicated this much hard work into school, he’d be a fucking A+ student.

He heard the bell ring, signalling lunch was over and algebra was to begin in 10 minutes time. He picked up his notebook, shoved it in his backpack, and walked off to class. Although he  _really_ didn’t want to see Gallagher, nor have to sit through a whole class with him in the seat next to his, he had to go to this class. If not, Gallagher would think he didn’t show up because of him; because he was embarrassed and weak. Mickey was neither of those things, so he had to suck it up and attend this bullshit class. On the bright side however, he’d have an hour to come up with prank ideas before training, which was cool. He arrived at class, and walked to his seat with arrogance (he was mostly faking how arrogant he was but no one knew that). He didn’t notice anyone looking at him funny, so he figured no one had heard about the incident yet, which calmed him down a little. Mickey sat down in his chair, pulled out his notebook, and began to jot down ideas for his best prank yet.  


* * *

It was training time once again, and today the cadets were running the obstacle course yet again. The TI had instructed that to make things interesting and challenging, each cadet would be paired with another for their run of the course. The two cadets were to run the course together, and basically race one another to the finish. Whoever came first, got to spot the loser during weight training, and got to take a day off from actually doing the training themselves. The TI debated whether he should pick names out of a hat, but decided that could end up being unfair. Imagine a short, wimpy cadet being paired up with Mickey. Hilarious. So instead, each cadet was to be put against someone in their own league. Unfortunately for Mickey, this meant Gallagher, as they were the top two highest scorers on the course. When notified of their partners, both Ian and Mickey were excited rather than annoyed, as this gave them each the chance to compete against, and hopefully beat, one another.

Mickey noticed Ian stretching off to the side of the base camp, warming up for their battle. Mickey didn’t need to warm up, warming up was for pussies. Mickey was confident that he could beat Gallagher regardless. When the boys names were called, signalling it was their turn to run the course, they both sprinted to the beginning point, eager to start.  When the whistle blew, both boys were off, trying their hardest to lead rather than fall behind.

For a while, things went smoothly. The rope course was quite neck in neck, both boys able to climb them with ease. Mickey fell behind a bit in the mud run, but was able to catch up to Gallagher during the tire run. Finally, the two boys reached the last obstacle, which consisted of simple hurdles to jump over. They both leaped over the first hurdle at the exact same time, and jumped the second one simultaneously as well. This worried Mickey; with only 8 hurdles left, either boy had the chance to win. Noticing Ian was just a tad bit behind him, Mickey stuck out his leg without even thinking, tripping Ian and sending him slamming into his back. Unfortunately, Mickey fell with him, landing on the ground completely intertwined with Ian, arms and legs flailing everywhere. Ian being beneath Mickey at this point, quickly turned the boys over, straddling Mickey and pinning his arms down to keep him from swatting at him. He started into Mickey’s eyes, about to let it out on him and tell him off for tripping him, but no words came out of his mouth. Instead, the two boys simply stared right into each other’s eyes, not looking away. You could not cut the sexual tension with a fucking knife.

Mickey looked away first, not wanting Ian to catch on to what Mickey was thinking. Ian slowly released his grip on Mickey’s wrists, and moved off of him onto the grass beside him. Both boys were so puzzled and confused by what just happened that they forgot they were in the middle of running the course. So many thoughts were running through Mickey’s head at this point, mostly about how hot Gallagher was and how green his eyes were. Yeah, Mickey hated Ian more than he ever hated anyone, but the guy was smoking hot regardless.

The TI’s voice brought both boys back to reality, as he screamed at them to continue. Ian got up quickly, and Mickey followed suit, both boys back on the track and hopping the last few hurdles. However, Mickey wasn’t so motivated to win anymore, and slowed his pace down a little to allow Ian to jump the last one first, winning the race. All the cadets raced towards Gallagher, slapping him on the back congratulating him for winning. Ian smiled and allowed all of them to fawn over him, as per usual. Mickey wiped the sweat off of his face, took a huge gulp of water, and walked to the bleachers to take a rest before he had to start weight training. He thought about how Gallagher was going to be his spotter, watching over him while he lifted weights and assisting him when needed. He snapped out of his thoughts instantly, a bit disturbed that he was a little turned on by what just happened, and what was about to happen. He shook his head and silently cursed at himself for thinking like that. He got up and made his way over to the gym, passing Gallagher without looking at him or saying a word. Once at the gym, he took a seat at a bench, claiming it as his own. Mickey could bench press quite a large amount for such a petite guy, and was ready to show Gallagher how strong he was. Before he knew it, Gallagher walked over to Mickey, a water bottle in his hand and his uniform open ever so slightly, so a bit of his chest was peeking out. Mickey couldn’t help but notice it, and stare a little. He scolded himself, promising to stop thinking about Gallagher for the rest of the day, unless it was something rude and awful. He somehow knew that he would end up breaking that promise. God, today was a fucked up day.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry this took so long to get up!! I have been super busy with work and just life lately, and probably will be for the next little while. I am NOT giving up on this story, I never will! But I will be posting less often. Posting almost every day is completely unrealistic for me, every few days or once a week is more appropriate!! I hope that's okay with you guys. Thanks so much for supporting this fic <333


	8. The Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I generally place my notes at the end of the chapter, but I figured I'd put it first this time, as I owe you all an explanation. It has been exactly a month since my last posting and I am SO sorry for that. I have been on vacation in the Caribbean/South America for the last 3 weeks and have had sketchy internet service, so I obviously could not post. However, I deeply apologize that I have been absent.
> 
> Also, I really wanted to thank everyone who has stuck by me and this fic through this last month. It honestly makes my day to see you still commenting and praising my fic and my writing. Seeing comments that you want me to update truly makes me so happy. So thank you so much for supporting this fic. I hope you enjoy this chapter, I know it's short but a lot is coming up! The next chapter will be posted soon, I promise.
> 
> I love you guys,   
> Elizabeth.

  
   Mickey awoke with a start, his pillow and bed covered in sweat. His heart was beating faster than it should have been, and his hands were clutching his sheets with so much strength that they were barely still clinging to his mattress. After his “competition” with Ian a week ago, Mickey had been thinking about him a lot. Unfortunately for Mickey, his constant thoughts about Gallagher transitioned into dreams about him; dreams that occurred every single fucking night.

 Although Mickey would hate to admit it, they were super hot; sometimes causing him to wake up with a hard on, or even worse, with wet bed sheets. After dealing with whatever situation he was faced with that night, he would return back to bed. For the first few nights, he was very frustrated as to why he kept dreaming about Gallagher. He’d lie there completely still with his eyes shut, trying to fall asleep, but sleep would not overcome him. Eventually, he came to realize that falling asleep after a sex dream was very hard for him. So for the past few nights instead, Mickey would lay there, eyes open, until the sun rose. Sometimes he would think about how real his dreams felt, and sometimes he would simply replay them in his head. He was beginning to think he was starting to enjoy the dreams, and would even go as far as saying he looked forward to them, and that scared the hell out of him. To say it was driving him insane was definitely an understatement. The next mornings at school, he was practically a zombie. The lack of sleep probably had something to do with that as well.  
  


The following morning, Mickey had decided to skip his first two classes. He was way too fucking tired to be able to concentrate, and knew if he even tried he would just fall asleep on his desk. Instead, he made his way over to his usual spot by the brick wall, and pulled out a cigarette from the front pocket of his jeans. He lit it, placed it between his lips, and exhaled a large puff of smoke. Over the next few minutes, his friends all began to join him one by one. None of them spoke to each other, instead nodding their silent hellos and each pulling out a cigarette of their own. Mickey was grateful for the silence; his head was pounding and even the smallest noise would bother him. The silence also gave room for him to think about his prank plans for Gallagher. Although it had been a week, he still didn’t know what he could do to top him. He was beginning to get frustrated and extremely anxious. He wondered if Gallagher had thought he had gone soft and given up after the shitting incident. He definitely did not, he just needed time.

Noticing his cigarette was almost out, he threw it to the ground, stepping on it to put it out. “So, Mick…” said the kid with glasses, who was still working on his own cigarette. “I’m making a trip into town this weekend to pick up some weed and shit. All of us are out, and god knows how hard it is to survive a day around here without some. You need any?”  
  
“Yeah, of course.” Mickey said, without hesitation. He could always use some weed. “A few grams at least.”   
  
“Cool, just come to my dorm tonight and gimme the money. I’ll have your shit for you by Saturday night at the latest.” He said, finishing off his bud and instantly lighting another one.

Mickey nodded in agreement and turned to walk away. The humidity and the sun constantly beating down on him was making his headache way worse, and all he wanted to do was sleep. He already skipped his first two classes, what was three more. As he made his way back to his dorm room, he reached his hands into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out his very old and tattered wallet. He had the thing since he was about 11, and it was about to completely fall apart. It was a surprise that it actually was still able to hold cash, let alone change. He opened it up, noticing how extremely empty it looked. He never had any credit cards, and had never put even a cent into his bank account, so the card slots were always empty. However, the slot where bills went, and the pocket where change was kept almost always had something in them; the benefits of being a Milkovich in Chicago. But today, as he looked through his wallet, all he found was a single 20 dollar bill. He cursed at himself and threw the wallet to the ground in anger, wondering how in the world he could spend almost all his money in such a short amount of time. He was fucked; there was no way to earn money here and it’s not like he had anyone back at home who would be willing to send him any.

He had finally approached his dorm, opening and then slamming the door shut with a loud bang. He marched his way over to a garbage can on Ian’s side of the room, and kicked it over out of frustration. The contents of it spilled all over the floor, littering their bedroom with even _more_ crap. Out of the corner of his eye, Mickey noticed a couple of quarters resting in the pile of garbage. Shit, Gallagher was so fucking rich he even threw money away. Mickey picked them up and pocketed them. Although it was only small change, it was still money. When you were as broke as Mickey, a spare quarter was like a gift from god. As Mickey straightened himself up, a realization came across him. Maybe Gallagher had some spare cash hiding somewhere in his room. Better yet, he had shit that Mickey could steal and pawn for some cash. A smile spread across his face, and he instantaneously began tearing through all of Gallagher’s belongings. This was somewhat difficult however, considering Ian _still_ hadn’t tidied his side of the room up after Mickey had destroyed it. He looked through all the piles of crap littering the floor, moved all the remaining pieces of furniture to look behind them and even searched through the pockets of Gallagher’s pants that littered the floor. So far he’d found about 13 dollars in change and about 50 bucks worth of shit to pawn.

Finally, he made his way over to the bed (practically the only thing that remained untouched during Mickey’s moment of destruction) and stripped it of the sheets. He removed Ian’s pillow, and shook it out, finding absolutely nothing. He tossed it on the floor, getting on his hands and knees to search under the bed. There, he found a 5 dollar bill, which he pocketed without hesitation, and a swiss army knife that he knew he could get some cash for. He stood up straight, fixing his shirt quickly, and turned in the direction of his side of the room. Suddenly, he remembered he forgot to check under the mattress, and quickly shoved an arm under it to see what he could find. His hand instantly grabbed a hold of something. He pulled it out to discover it was just a pile of magazines, the top one being an army magazine. Typical.

Thinking he heard a noise outside the door, Mickey startled and dropped the pile of magazines on the ground. He swore to himself, and bent down to pick them up. He gathered them into a pile, not at all caring about restoring them to how he originally found them, and went to shove them under the bed again. However, something caught Mickey’s eye that he did not expect at all. Peeking out from underneath 3 or 4 army magazines was the corner of a porno. Mickey laughed to himself, tossing the rest of the magazines on the bed, and taking a seat beside the pile, porno magazine still in hand. Taking a look at the cover more carefully, Mickey’s laughter began to subside and he began to find it hard to breathe properly. The magazine wasn’t just any plain porn magazine; it was a gay porn magazine. Normally, he’d be happy to have found a gay porno; he’d claim it as his own and add it to his collection. But the fact that it was Gallagher’s….

Mickey dropped it onto the pile in an instant, and began ruffling through the rest of Ian’s magazines, finding loads more gay porn. He grabbed a few of them, and flipped through them to confirm that he wasn’t going crazy. Gallagher had gay porn; porn with men in it, not girls. Gallagher was attracted to men… Gallagher was gay.

At that very instant, the door to their shared dorm swung open and in walked Ian. He looked over at Mickey sitting on his bed with confusion, locking eyes with him. His gaze slowly travelled down from his eyes to his hands, where he noticed what the boy was holding. All the color drained from his face, and he grabbed the door frame in an attempt to steady himself, as if he was going to fall over or pass out. Mickey dropped the magazines, shock evidently on his face, and shoved them back under the mattress where he found them. He looked back up at Ian, stood in the exact same position with the exact same look on his face. He was in complete shock; both boys were. Ian Gallagher was gay, and although Mickey was surprised, he was more in shock for a different reason. He was shocked because he was actually excited about this news, and this disturbed him.


	9. The Truce

Neither boy spoke, or even flinched. Both were still completely shocked, and couldn’t think of a single word to say to diffuse the obvious tension in the room. Ian’s hands were shaking against the doorframe still, his eyes staring at the carpet in an attempt to avoid Mickey’s. Finally, about 5 minutes later, Ian let out a heavy sigh and slowly stepped into the room towards his bed, where Mickey was still sitting.   
  
“Mickey, I….” he raised his hands in a form of surrender, and slowly squinted his eyes in anticipation. “You can like, punch me in the face now or whatever, I can take it.”

Mickey just stared at him; eyebrows raised so far his face that they almost touched his goddamn forehead. Ian’s eyes slowly opened; and he noticed that Mickey was still staring at him. However, as he realised that the Milkovich boy was still sitting comfortably, and not getting ready to beat the crap out of him, he relaxed a little, the creases and worry lines in his forehead disappearing.

“So you’re not going to beat me up?”  
  
“Why would I?” Mickey responded, half confused and half incredulous that Gallagher would even think he would stoop as low as fag-bashing. “Just because I’m a dick doesn’t mean I’m some sort of homophobic asshole.” He said as casually as he could, hoping that Gallagher didn’t see right through his tone. He was not ready for him to know that he was gay too; too much coming out of the closet for one day.

Mickey could see the relief on Gallagher’s face; his features not even the slightest bit tense anymore. Ian took a step closer to his bed, and took a seat practically on top of Mickey, who then shifted over slightly. (Personal space was a huge thing for him). Ian sighed, and then proceeded to spill his guts to the Milkovich boy for the next hour. He told him all about how he was completely out at home, and how even though it was rough for him growing up, all of his friends and family members accepted and loved him for who he was. He told Mickey about all the horror stories he heard about gay kids at school, and how it persuaded him to stay in the closet while he was here. Throughout the duration of the conversation, Mickey felt himself become more and more empathetic with him, as he too, was in the closet out of fear of judgement.

After Gallagher was done spilling his guts, he simply just stared at Mickey. He assumed the guy wanted him to say something in response, like “I’m so sorry” or “Wow, what a horrible thing to go through”, but Mickey wasn’t the type to outwardly express how he felt. So he simply said “Wow man, sucks.”

Ian, however, seemed quite satisfied with this answer, giving Mickey a short nod and a simple “Yeah, it does.” The boys remained silent for quite some time after that, and Mickey began to feel quite awkward. He didn’t know whether to remain seated on Ian’s bed, or go back to his own. Should he leave the room and give the guy some space? Should he talk to him some more? Mickey was not built to deal with awkward silences (he fucking hated them) so he decided he needed to say something.  
  
“So… that brunette chick in your photo,” he signalled to the picture of Gallagher and the girl on his desk, “not your girlfriend then, huh?”  
  
Ian bursted out laughing, the kind of laughing where your face turns red and you clutch at your stomach in an attempt to stop yourself. He snorted, and rolled around on his bed. Mickey stared at him in anticipation, curious to why he was laughing like Mickey just asked the stupidest question in the entire world. When the laughter died down a little bit, Ian shook his head at Mickey, his hand also mimicking the motion.   
  
“No way in hell, dude. She’s my sister, that’s so gross that you even thought that.”   
  
“How should I know?” Mickey retorted, stifling a laugh as well. If someone asked him if Mandy was his girlfriend, he probably would’ve had the same reaction that Gallagher just did. “You look nothing like her, you’re a fucking ginger.”   
  
Ian laughed again, shrugging his shoulders a little. The two boys smiled at each other; Ian’s smile beaming and Mickey’s a somewhat smirk. There was no tension between the two, something that was uncommon between them. Mickey suddenly felt somewhat relieved, and even comfortable around Gallagher. The look on Gallagher’s face at the moment told Mickey that he felt the same way.   
  
“Why do you hate me so much?” Ian asked suddenly. He didn’t ask it accusingly, or even in an angry way. He simply asked as though it was an inquiry; just something that he wanted to know. Mickey could tell this from the tone of his voice, and his body language, yet he still felt inclined to answer as truthfully as possible. Milkoviches weren’t one to stray from the truth just to spare someone’s feelings.   
  
“Because you’re an entitled, rich prick who thinks he’s better than the rest of us?” He responded, framing his answer as a sort of question. To be honest, he wasn’t even entirely sure if that was the true answer, or even if he actually hated him at all.  Ian nodded, taking in the response and accepting it.

“I’m not rich.” he said simply.

Mickey shook his head incredulously. “Yes you are dude.”

“No, I’m not.” Ian laughed nervously. “I’m from Canaryville and I’m here on scholarship. If that sounds rich to you….”

Mickey stared at him, processing the information he just received. The Gallagher kid was not rich, and lived in a neighbourhood that was practically a 15 minute walk from his crappy house. Plus, he was here on a scholarship aka not paying any tuition at all, like himself.

“No way,” Mickey shook his head, a little laugh emitting from his mouth. “You kiss way too much ass to be a scholarship, Southside kid.”  
  
Ian couldn’t help but a laugh a bit at his comment too. He shrugged his shoulders and sighed loudly. “I know I do…. I just really want to be in the army; it’s my dream. And I don’t want to fuck up my chances, it’s the only shot I’ve got, you know? If I’ve got to kiss a bit of ass to get to where I want to be, then so be it.”

Mickey nodded, understanding where the kid was coming from. He didn’t know what else to say in response, so he clapped him on the back instead. The bed squeaked as he lifted himself off of it and wandered across the room to his side. As he stalked over to his bed, he noticed a jingling noise coming from his pocket; the change and money he stole from Gallagher. Now knowing what he did, he was confused as to why the kid just discarded money when he clearly needed it. He now also felt kind of bad knowing that he had stole money that Gallagher probably needed.

He turned around from his bed, and quickly made his way over to Gallagher again. Picking the entirety of the money out of his pocket, he dropped the money into Gallagher’s lap.   
  
“So uh, I kind of jacked this from you when I thought you were rich and snobby and stuff. Sorry ‘bout that.”

Ian just laughed as if he expected Mickey to do something like that, and pocketed the change. He stared up at Mickey, waiting for him to retreat back to his side of the room, but he didn’t.   
  
“I found some of it in the garbage can,” Mickey explained, motioning towards the half-empty trash can spilling on the ground. “I know it’s just change and shit, but why wouldn’t you keep it? You clearly need it.”   
  
He didn’t care ask because he cared about Ian’s well-being, or about anything the guy did, he was just simply curious.   
  
Ian pondered his answer for a moment. “I didn’t know it was in the trash, I didn’t throw it out on purpose or anything. I’m just extremely messy.” He seemed embarrassed with his answer, which made sense considering extremely messy was an understatement.   
  
“I guess I just like clutter and mess. It’s why I haven’t cleaned up my room yet. Back home, we had stuff everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere. Dishes went without being cleaned, clothes with price tags still on them littered the floors of my sisters’ rooms and toys were everywhere. The place was a complete and utter shithole. Yet, it was home. I don’t know, it sounds stupid, but I guess I just miss it.”

Once again, for the millionth time that day, Mickey found himself at a loss for words. He was not expecting that to be Gallagher’s answer. And although he didn’t want to be concerned with Gallagher’s feelings _at all_ , he couldn’t help but feel bad. Maybe he had misjudged him this whole time; maybe they were more alike than he thought. Mickey suddenly felt conflicted with what to say and do next. He was confused about how he felt; the result of too much information being thrown at him in a short period of time. Because of this, the next words to come out of Mickey’s mouth were unexpected and shocking to both Gallagher and himself.   
  
“Look, how ‘bout we make a truce? I stop trying to make your life a living hell, and you do the same. Doesn’t mean we’re gonna be best friends and braid each other’s hair and shit, but you know… we don’t have to be assholes either.”   
  
Ian’s smile grew; he was incredulous, stunned and somewhat ecstatic all at the same time.

“Yeah, truce, of course.” He nodded his head vigorously, and it suddenly made Mickey feel like he made a mistake. Gallagher still annoyed him to no end, no matter how bad he felt or how attracted to him he actually was. He was so confused and so conflicted about everything that he was feeling, and he needed to just get away. He needed time alone to just think. He picked up his jacket off his bed, and made his way toward the door, feeling the need to get out of the room as soon as possible.  
  
Once he reached the door, he turned around and faced Gallagher.  
  
 “Okay… but I still fucking hate you, you know.” he opened the door. Before he left the room, he noticed a smile appear once again on Ian’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay first of all, I just need to apologize to everyone who has been anticipating the next chapter for the last FOUR MONTHS. I seriously am so incredibly sorry that it has taken me this long to post another chapter, but i've been in the worst writing slump possible. However, as promised, I will not give up on this story until it is finished. And I am finally back on the writing horse again, so expect more chapters to come. 
> 
> Secondly, thank you SO much to everyone who has written to me on tumblr and/or on here giving me feedback, and telling me how much you love this story and want me to continue. It truly makes my day to see that people actually enjoy my writing, and are actually invested in this story. So again, thank you guys. 
> 
> On another note, who else is SUPER STOKED for season 5? I'm literally counting down the days till Ian and Mickey grace my television again. I can't wait to see their storyline this season UGH.
> 
> So yeah, another chapter will be up when I have some time. This story will not go unfinished, I promise. Love you all!


	10. The Storage Closet

The following few days were weird, to say the least. When in the privacy of their own dorm room, Ian and Mickey actually talked and somewhat got to know each other, even though Mickey was quite insistent that he “didn’t care” about Ian’s life. Many hours were spent playing video games together (obviously Mickey smoked Ian’s ass) and watching old movies with one another.  Although he hated to admit it, it was nice that Mickey finally had someone to just hang out with, as he was starting to get kind of lonely. Sure, he had his group of friends, but it’s not like he lived with them or saw them basically 24/7.

Although the two boys were cool with each other in private, being together in public was a whole different story. Mickey had his group of friends, and Ian had his; two completely opposing sides of the social spectrum. Mickey’s friends liked to hit the bong, and Ian’s friends liked to hit the books; just one of the reasons why the two groups of boys hated each other. As a result, Mickey found himself treating Ian like shit in public, and the Gallagher boy did the same. It was just how things like this went; Ian’s friends would shit on him if they found out he was buddies with a delinquent like Mickey Milkovich. And Mickey’s friends would pretty much disown him as one of their own if they knew what happened between the boys behind closed doors.  

So, the two boys were still basically enemies. Which honestly wasn’t so hard for Mickey, because even though he somewhat liked the guy now, Gallagher could be annoying as hell. However, sometimes he thought that maybe Ian felt differently; that maybe it was hard for him to treat Mickey like shit. Sometimes in class, or at training, he would catch Ian glancing at him with a slightly sad look on his face, making Mickey feel all tingly and giddy and shit, which was something he did not want to feel.

  
About a week after their truce as made, Mickey stormed through the hallway of his dorm, kicking random shit and punching walls out of frustration. He had just had an encounter with the douchebag of a Dean, and was reeling because of it. God, he fucking hated that guy so much that it made his skin itch.

Earlier in the day, Mickey and the brother who wears glasses, had played an (what he thought to be innocent) prank on one of their fellow classmates. After the damage was done, the Dean called the two of them into his office to discuss punishment. However, the brother with the glasses got off easy with a stupid 3 days of detention, while Mickey had a week of detention and 20 community services hours he had to complete. Mickey was confused as to why he got a harsher punishment than his friend when they both had equal parts in playing the prank. He knew that the dean was hardly his biggest fan, and the feeling was mutual, but he didn’t seem to think it was fair that disliking him gave him the right to enforce a worse punishment on him. Thinking about this and the fact that for the next 7 days he’d be spending most of his time in detention or picking up garbage, made Mickey’s mood deteriorate greatly.

Mickey stumbled into his dorm room, kicking the door open with the heel of his foot roughly. He was aggravated, annoyed and so not in the mood to deal with Gallagher at the moment. He found him sitting on his bed, engrossed in his biology textbook (of course). Ian looked up at him, raising his eyebrows at the shorter boy’s mood.

“What’s up with you?” Ian laughed, shoving his textbook onto the bed beside him.  
  
“None of your business,” Mickey retorted, moving towards his drawers to his weed stash. He needed a blunt right now more than he needed air. He knew Ian would probably have an issue with Mickey smoking in the room, but he didn’t care.

He pulled the dresser open, moving around various pairs of socks and underwear until he found what he was looking for. He pulled the small plastic bag out of the drawer, shutting it, and stuck his hand in his pocket, viciously searching for a lighter. All the while, Ian just stared at him curiously.

Mickey moved over to his bed, and sat down on top of his mattress. Reaching behind him, he cracked his window open a little so he wouldn’t end up hotboxing his room. He knew Gallagher wouldn’t appreciate that. He grabbed a stack of papers from his bedside table, moving aside some crap off the top of it to make space so he could start rolling.

He felt Ian staring at him, and looked up to find that the younger boy was smirking a little.

“If you have a problem with all this,” Mickey said as he motioned towards the weed with his hands. “you can fucking leave.”

Ian shook his head, laughing a little. He suddenly got up off of his bed, and instead of making his way to the door like Mickey thought he would, walked right up to Mickey’s bed and took a seat.

“I don’t have a problem at all, actually. I was merely wondering if you would mind sharing…”

Mickey turned to face Ian, and looked at him incredulously. Out of all the shit that happened today, this was the most shocking and unexpected.  
  
“Wait…” Mickey started. “You smoke weed?”  
  
Ian nodded vigorously; a silent yes to the boy’s question. Mickey tried his best to stifle a laugh, but failed, laughing so hard that the bed shook.  
  
“Wow, Gallagher. Guess you’re not as much of a grumpy lil’ asshole like I thought.”  
  
“Shut up.” Ian laughed, as he took the now rolled blunt and lighter out of Mickey’s fingers, lighting it. He stuck the joint into his mouth, curling his lips around it. Mickey couldn’t help but watch as Ian’s parted lips inhaled slowly. He was mesmerized by him, by how attractive he looked in that moment.

Ian’s gaze flicked up to Mickey’s as he passed the blunt to his roommate. Realization dawned on Mickey that he was staring at Ian quite intensely. So he grabbed the joint out of his hand and looked away quickly, trying to avoid the other boy’s eyes.

* * *

  
A good 15 minutes later, and the two boys were baked like a cake. Mickey was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed and shoving cheetos into his mouth. Ian was sitting across from him, leaning against his own bed and laughing insanely at god knows what. If only Mickey had known that Ian was actually a cool guy to get high with, he would’ve done this a long time ago.

After Ian’s laughter died down, the room became very silent. Not an awkward silence, however. Simply a comfortable silence; the two of them content with not saying anything. Ian mumbled something suddenly; Mickey not able to make out what was said.  
  
“What’s that?” Mickey asked, throwing the now empty bag of cheetos at the garbage can and missing.

“I really hate my friends, man….” He said silently, trailing off.  
  
“Yeah, me too.” Mickey laughed.  
  
“No seriously. They’re cool guys and all, and we have certain things in common I guess. But dude, they’re so lame and stuck up and….god, they’re the kind of people I’d hate if I was living back in the Southside.”  
  
“Then why do ya hang out with them?” Mickey asked, genuinely curious.  
  
Ian thought about it for a second, genuinely questioning himself why he _did_ hang out with them. “I don’t know man, I guess I like the idea of them more than I actually like them, you know? Like, being popular and having everyone like me is nice.”  
  
Mickey snorted. “You’re on crack if you think everybody likes you; my friends hate you.”

Ian laughed as well, nodding his head in agreement. “Your friends don’t like anyone so I don’t take it too personally.”

Mickey cracked a smile as he got up off of the floor. He made his way towards the shelves at the front of the room, picking up the empty bag of cheetos on the way, and actually throwing it into the garbage this time. He looked around his side of the shelves for more snacks, still starving and wanting to munch on something. He was unfortunately out of everything, and by the looks of it, Ian was too. Fuck being poor, man.  
  
He turned back towards Ian, all the while looking through his backpack to see if there was any food in there.

“Why don’t you just stop hanging out with them if you hate them so much?”  
  
“Who else would I hang out with, you and your delinquents?”  
  
Mickey laughed awkwardly, wanting to say yes but knowing that he should say no. He wouldn’t mind hanging out with Gallagher a bit more often, today was evidence that the guy wasn’t as bad as he seemed. But he knew his friends, and they would not be okay with it. Besides, Mickey was supposed to hate this kid, not want to hang out with him all the time. Hanging out with Ian would only ruin the reputation that he worked so hard to build.

“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Mickey replied, instead.  
  
Ian nodded, an unreadable look on his face. He motioned towards the door, and stated “You know there’s food in the common room, right? Like snacks and shit.”  
  
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Most days, Mickey forgot that they even had a common room, never making it a habit to socialize with students like most others did.

“C’mon, I’ll show you where it is.” Ian said, standing up and making his way towards the door.

* * *

   
“Dude!” Mickey shouted rather excitedly, trying to balance multiple bags of chips, pretzels and cheetos. “If I had known all this shit was available to eat FOR FREE, then I totally wouldn’t have eaten all your food.”

Ian shook his head, chuckling at the brunette. He was balancing a few snacks as well, as Mickey couldn’t possibly carry everything he was planning on taking.

Mickey, seemingly content with the snacks he had gathered, turned to leave the common room when he noticed a can of Pringles on the top shelf. Pringles were his absolute favourite; he needed those. He put the bags currently in his hands on a nearby table, and reached up to grab the canister. However, because he wasn’t the tallest guy in the world, was unable to get them.  
  
“Gallagher,” he turned to the redhead, staring him down. “Get your tall ass over here and get me those Pringles.”

Ian made his way over to Mickey, and stood so close to him that the two boys were practically on top of one another. Mickey watched as he reached his arm up to the top shelf, almost touching the can when he heard the sound of a group of boys approaching. He froze in an instant, recognizing those voices, and saw in his peripheral as Ian did the same. _Mickey’s friends._

Before he could even think, Mickey pushed Ian’s hand away from the canister, and ushered him into a storage closet in the far corner of the common room. Mickey put his fingers to his lips, silently willing Ian to keep quiet. He wasn’t ready for them to know they were hanging out yet. Ian obliged, staying as quiet as humanly possible.

The closet was tiny; so cramped and small that the two boys _were_ actually on top of each other this time. Their legs, stomachs and arms were touching; their bodies basically rubbing up against one another. Mickey could feel Ian's hard stomach up against his, and suddenly, his stomach started to feel... weird, and tingly. He gulped rather loudly, and looked up at Ian’s face to find that he was staring at him quite intently. Mickey told himself he needed to look away, that he couldn’t possibly be feeling what he was feeling right now. But he was, and he couldn’t stop staring at those perfect green eyes. Ian suddenly looked down at Mickey’s lips, and Mickey inhaled loudly. His mouth suddenly became really dry, and he heard Ian’s breathing pick up as well. The sexual tension radiating between the two was actually unbearable. He noticed Ian was slowly moving his head forward, and he instinctively did the same.

All of a sudden, the voices outside came to a stop, and the noise of a door slamming shut fluttered into the closet.

Mickey’s gaze slowly drifted away from Ian, as he snapped back to the current situation. Ian Gallagher totally was going to kiss him…. and for a moment there, Mickey was ready and willing to kiss him back.

Mickey opened the closet door, stumbling out in a hurry. He needed to get out of there, and fast. Although this whole “finding himself suddenly attracted to Ian and then running away from him” thing was getting old, it was necessary at the moment.

“I, uh, got to go do something.” Mickey said, stumbling over his words.

“Yeah, m-me too.” Ian said, pushing past Mickey and practically running out of the room.

Both boys went their respective ways. Mickey went to get drunk with his friends, while Ian went back to their room to take a cold shower. They were so wrapped up in what just happened that neither of them even realized that they left all of their snacks scattered on the floor of the common room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a longer one to make up for my very long absense. I hope you all enjoyed! Also, I just wanted to thank you guys for all the positive feedback and comments. Reading about how much you enjoy this series really and truly makes my day. 
> 
> If you want updates on posting and stuff, feel free to follow me on tumblr! www.iangallagh3r.tumblr.com :)
> 
> Love you all!!


	11. The Party

Mickey stumbled through the hallway of his building, smelling of sweat, vomit and whisky. It was quite hard for him to walk, let alone stand up; the result of a night filled with an insane amount of drinking. He tried to grab onto something to steady himself, but found nothing other than the flat, cream-coloured walls of the hallway. He knew that if he didn’t find something to hold onto, he was soon going to fall flat on his face. Mickey sighed in defeat, and slowly lowered himself onto his hands and knees. He was drunk enough not to be embarrassed by the fact that he was now crawling to his bedroom on all fours.

Once he reached his room, he outstretched his arm as far as he could, attempting to reach the doorknob. He struggled for quite some time (fuck being short, man), finally opening the door as quietly as he could. He did _not_ want to wake up Ian and have to face him after their almost-kiss in the storage closet. Mickey crawled his way to his bed quietly, as he tried his best to avoid all the garbage and crap scattered across the floor of his room. He pulled off his shirt, tossing it on the floor and pulled himself into a sitting position on top of his sheets. He yanked his garbage can so it was sitting beside him on the floor, just in case he needed it later (which he would).

Once in bed, he tried his best to fall asleep, but too many thoughts ran through his mind. Most of these thoughts were unfortunately about Ian. Mickey suddenly couldn’t help it; he opened his eyes, turning on his side to face his roommate. The boy was sleeping with his mouth slightly open, and one arm snuggled underneath his pillow. He looked so peaceful in his sleep that Mickey wondered what it was he was dreaming about; it must’ve been great. A small smile appeared on Mickey’s face as his eyes slowly closed. He fell asleep dreaming about the redheaded asshole sleeping in the bed beside him.  
  
The next few days were extremely awkward for both Ian and Mickey. Both boys tried to avoid one another as much as possible. When Ian was in the room studying, Mickey made it his mission to be out of the room. When Mickey sat at the back of the class, Ian sat at the front. With Mickey having to attend detention and do community service, avoiding Ian wasn’t actually that hard. The only time they were ever remotely near each other was when they were both sleeping. However, Mickey didn’t even seem to be doing that much anymore. Instead, he found himself staying up late at night, facing the wall and trying not to think about the boy sleeping right next to him. Sometimes he’d find himself turning over, and just staring at Ian until he finally drifted off to sleep. But even then, he’d only get a couple of hours of sleep maximum. He’d wake up a little while later, and start thinking about him again. Thinking about Ian was entirely exhausting, in more ways than one. Mickey needed to find a way for this to stop, or else he’d never get a good night’s sleep ever again. 

* * *

Mickey stood against the wall, at his smoking spot with the guy with the nose ring, the following Friday after evening training. He couldn’t be more relieved that he had 2 days free of class, and not because of the actual learning, but because of Ian. At least on the weekends, he could spend almost 24 hours of the day away from him.

Mickey checked his watch; it was 9:15pm. The one with the nose ring was telling him about a party going on tonight that was supposedly going to be amazing. There was a university about a 10 minutes north, and one of the fraternities were hosting the party in their house. Mickey had never been big on frat parties, or even frat boys, but he was big on alcohol and weed… and he was sure that there would be a ton of that there.

He told his friend that he’d meet him and the rest of the guys by the car. The brother who always wore capris had a really old school Camaro that Mickey was basically in love with. He was positive that he stole it (someone of his social status could definitely not afford a beautiful car like that) but Mickey didn’t care regardless. He liked that he had a friend who was practically always willing to give him a ride.

Mickey raced back to his room, throwing the door open and instantly rushing to his tiny dresser to find a clean pair of jeans. He threw on a dark wash pair, changing his shirt too for good measure, and grabbed a bottle of hair gel. It was then that he noticed the room was awfully quiet. Turning around, he realized he was alone. Ian’s bed was made perfectly, left as it was that morning. Yet, his books were back, telling Mickey that he had been back to the room and left. Mickey was shocked; Ian barely ever left the room, let alone on Friday nights at 10pm. He shrugged it off, turning back to his hair gel and silently telling himself not to concern himself with that Gallagher was doing. He didn’t care, remember? Now he just had to convince himself that.

* * *

Mickey did not dance; like ever. He was way too awkward for that shit, and was also very uncoordinated and bad on his feet. He cringed just thinking about dancing. However, in this moment, he really, truly wished he liked to dance. Every single goddamn person at this party was gyrating and grinding their hips on one another and Mickey completely felt like the odd man out. Even the twins, who were the most socially awkward out of their friend group, were each dancing with a girl. He recognized the song; some Steve Aoki club jam that he heard at almost every party he went too. He didn’t necessarily like it though; techno and house music was not his thing.

Leaning against the wall, Mickey surveyed the multitude of people who were at this party. The majority were frat boys (clearly as this was their house) who had way too much gel in their hair and extremely bright clothing. Mickey decided he did not like them too much. Next, there were many, many girls here; girls with way too much makeup and way too little clothing. Some of them were dancing in packs, some were making out with guys, and some were taking body shots off some dude in the corner. Mickey decided he did not like them either.

Just as Mickey was getting utterly annoyed with people watching, he noticed a streak of shockingly red hair in the crowd. He would notice that hair colour anywhere. He moved off the wall he was leaning against, looking for the head that the hair belonged too, but could not find it. He figured he must’ve been just seeing things (as he was sadly thinking about a certain redhead all night) and decided he needed to find more alcohol.

Mickey made his way into the extremely empty kitchen of the house, and found himself a bottle of tequila. He popped the top off and drank straight from the bottle; cringing at the harsh taste. He was never one to drink hard liquor straight, but he felt like he needed it. He needed to be drunk to survive this horrible party.

Once he felt as though he had drunk enough, and the room started to spin a bit, he made his way towards the “dance floor” again. However, he still found himself annoyed with all the frat boys and their dancing, so he made his way upstairs. He stumbled into a bedroom accidently, walking into the middle of a serious hookup between a tall guy wearing half of an ROTC uniform and a short girl with long blonde hair. He muttered his apologies and quickly walked out of the room, silently cursing at himself. At the back of the house, he noticed the door to a porch that overlooked the backyard. Figuring no one would be outside; he slid the screen door open, and made his way towards a chair at the far left.

He sat down on it, nearly missing and landing on the floor, and took a deep breath. It was nice to be away from all the craziness and hormones for a moment. God, he hated teenagers sometimes.

“It’s nice out tonight, huh?” a strange yet extremely familiar voice coming from the right of him said.

Mickey turned his head suddenly, the voice startling him. And found that sitting beside him was the one and only Ian Gallagher. His eyes were quite red and he was gripping the chair so tightly that he must’ve been afraid he was going to fall over. He was clearly very wasted, and the thought made Mickey smile for some reason.

“Ian Gallagher’s actually at a normal party? Wow, hell must’ve frozen over, huh?”  
  
Ian simply laughed, which made Mickey feel a lot more at ease. They hadn’t spoken a single word to each other in forever; he was glad this conversation was relatively normal and not awkward. He decided it was because they were both drunk (thank you alcohol).

“Yeah, a friend dragged me here.” He replied, slurring his words a little bit.  
  
“Oh. Why you sittin’ out here?”  
  
“I could ask you the same thing.” Ian smirked, slurring his words so bad that it was almost hard for Mickey to understand. “I kind of hate dancing, social interaction and most people in general.”

“Why don’t you leave then?”

“My ride is currently balls deep in some random frat girl.”

So that was the douchebag Mickey walked in on just a few minutes before. “I see.” He said simply, trailing off. An awkward silence ensued, and Mickey silently cursed himself for coming out here in the first place. He was just about to get up and leave when Gallagher broke the silence.

“Look, Mick.” He started, still slurring. “What h-happened a few days ago, I just want to apologize. It wasn’t cool for me to put you in such an awkward position like that. I fucked up, and I shouldn’t have almost kissed you. I know you’re straight, so I apologize for that. I’m sorry.”

Mickey nodded, “It’s alright.”

Ian smiled, glad that his roommate accepted his apology. “Look, I’ve made it my rule to never come on to straight guys… I honestly don’t know why I did. Maybe because you’re so fucking hot, but-”  
  
Mickey’s eyes literally popped out of his head. Ian thought he was hot?  
  
Ian stopped mid-sentence, taking Mickey’s face as a sign of disgust or embarrassment, and quickly began to explain his comment. “I did not mean to say that, I’m sorry. I’m so drunk. Take it as a compliment though, you know? Girls must be all over you man, good for you….” He continued to ramble nervously.

Mickey tuned out, focused on his own thoughts instead. It may be the alcohol, or the fact that Ian just called him “fucking hot”, but he suddenly just wanted to kiss him. Like badly.

Quickly checking to make sure no one else was around to witness what was about to happen, Mickey stood up and strode his way over to where Ian was sitting. A look of confusion appeared on the still-chattering boy’s head as Mickey bent down and grabbed his face, pressing his lips against the redhead’s. At first, Ian didn’t move, completely shocked by what was happening. But soon, the two boys established a rhythm; tongues lapping over one another and hands caressing every inch of the other’s body.

Mickey was absolutely lost in the kiss, not even remotely thinking about what he was doing. He pulled Ian up into a standing position as their lips continued to hungrily move over one another’s, and pushed him up against the side of the house. Ian slid his hands up Mickey’s shirt, emitting a soft groan from the boy’s lips. Once Mickey found it somewhat hard to breathe, he pulled away, staring at Ian with a mix of lust, hunger, and nervousness.

Ian opened and shut his mouth, trying to find the right words to say. He didn’t know how to put his current thoughts into words. “You’re gay?” he simply whispered, shock written all over his face.

Mickey laughed a bit; a definite result of the alcohol. If Ian would’ve asked him this while he was sober, he probably would’ve denied it. But he was feeling extra honest and adventurous tonight, not to mention horny; super horny.

“Dude I look at your ass like all the time.” He responded as a way of saying yes.

Ian laughed, wrapping his arms around Mickey’s neck in the process. “I do have a really nice ass.”

They continued to kiss for quite some time, taking occasional breaks to take a breath or talk about their extreme attraction for one another. Just when Ian was about to take Mickey’s shirt off (which he so desperately wanted), the two boys heard someone approaching the door.

Mickey pushed Ian away forcefully; equally angry that they were cockblocked yet again, and scared that someone had saw them. The brother with the glasses and the short guy with tattoos walked out; tattoos holding onto glasses for support.

“Dude, there you are! We were looking for you everywhere!” Glasses said. “We’re gonna head out, Frankie’s passed out in my back seat and I’m pretty sure Tony’s about to puke his brains out…. Why are you with Gallagher?”

Mickey tried his hardest to keep his breath even, not wanting to expose what was just happening moments before. “Kid was pestering me for weed, man. Told him I didn’t sell to stuck-up assholes.” Mickey laughed, walking over to his friends to help steady the guy with tattoos. He opened the door, ushering his friends out in front of him.

He turned back towards Ian, who now had a very blatant look of confusion on his face. He looked quite hurt too, but Mickey preferred not to think about that.  

“This never happened.” He said, closing the door behind him and stalking off to catch up with his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you guys enjoyed this one; thanks again for all the love you guys are giving me & this story. Reading all your comments/feedback really makes a girl feel good ya know? hahaha!  
> I don't know when I'll be posting the next chapter, but i'll be updating my progress on tumblr! http://iangallagh3r.tumblr.com


	12. The Morning After

Mickey woke up the next morning with a giant headache, bruised knuckles and a horrible feeling in his stomach. He didn’t feel sick or hungover like he expected. Instead, he felt confused and angry and kind of guilty.

After what happened between him and Gallagher, Mickey and his friends had gotten incredibly drunk. Although everything after he left Ian outside was a complete blur, he assumed that his purple knuckles were a result of a fight at some point. This didn’t surprise Mickey, as it was common for him to get into random fights when feeling distressed or angry. However, he was curious about who he decided to beat on this time.

Mickey pushed himself into a seated position, and swung his legs over his bed and onto his floor. Across from him, Ian was fast asleep in bed, facing away from him. Mickey let out a sigh of relief, not wanting to have to talk to him after last night, and trudged his way into his bathroom to brush his teeth and fix his hair.

Once he was done, he turned off the sink, and looked at himself in the mirror for a couple of seconds. He decided he looked pretty decent for being hungover, and opened the door to his bedroom. Mickey was startled to see Gallagher, standing with his back leaning against the now open doorframe, staring down at him with a massive black eye. Mickey flinched, and stumbled backwards a bit, realizing that it was probably Ian that he had hit last night. Considering he was already feeling guilty before he knew he beat up Gallagher, the amount of guilt he felt now was through the roof.

“We need to talk.” Ian said calmly. He didn’t look mad or upset, he simply just looked confused.

Mickey nodded his head at the taller boy as they both made their way over to their beds, each boy sitting on his own mattress.

Ian sighed, and ran a hand through his orange, slightly overgrown hair. “What the fuck happened last night?”

Mickey’s eyes widened. He knew Ian would probably want to talk about last night, but he didn’t think he’d just come out and say it so blatantly. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stammered.

Ian laughed dryly; clearly able to read Mickey like a book. “Let me give you the play-by-play then. We were both outside, I told you that I think you’re hot, we made out, you stormed out and then we both got even more hammered. Oh, and I think someone punched me in the face because my eye hurts really fucking bad.”

Mickey let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t know he was holding in, and pulled his sleeves down over his knuckles so Ian couldn’t see the bruising. He didn’t want him to know that _he_ punched him; not yet. Mickey looked up towards the redhead, locking eyes with him. Gallagher was staring at him so intently, waiting for him to respond. Mickey didn’t know what to say though, and settled for saying nothing.

Ian sighed impatiently, “You and I both know what happened last night, Mick. Stop pretending like you don’t.”  
  
“I’m not gay.” Mickey spit out; the only words that would form on his lips.

Ian laughed that dry, irritated laugh again; this time a lot louder. “Yeah, okay Mickey.”

“I’m not, douchebag.” Mickey protested. “I was just drunk. People do stupid shit all the time when they’re drunk.” His heart was beating so fast, and he could feel sweat starting to form on his forehead. Mickey was usually a fantastic liar, but for some reason, he found it incredibly hard to speak these words. Convincing Ian was one thing, but convincing himself was a whole other, way harder thing to do.

Ian shook his head, clearly frustrated. Mickey noticed that his hands were balled into fists, and his whole body looked incredibly tense. Then suddenly, as if Ian was internally thinking and debating with himself, his whole body untensed. His face fell, and suddenly he didn’t look angry anymore, just kind of sad.  “You’re in denial, Mickey. Why can’t you just admit that you feel something for me? Yeah, you were drunk when you kissed me. But don’t tell me you haven’t felt that tension between us for all these weeks. Do not tell me that.”

Mickey looked away from him, and stood up from his bed. He made his way over to where his shoes were, not saying a word, and slipped on a pair of UGG slippers. He grabbed a jacket that was laying on a desk chair by the door to their dorm, and twisted the doorknob, opening the door slightly. He looked back at Ian, who was still sitting in the same spot with the same look on his face. “I’m not gay.” He repeated, trying to convince both Ian and himself for a second time.

Ian bit his lip, nodding his head as Mickey opened the door wider. “We’ll see about that.”

* * *

  
The first three classes of the day went by kind of quickly, considering Mickey actually tried to pay attention. Generally during class, Mickey didn’t listen to a single word the teacher said. Instead, for the majority of class he found himself biting his nails while staring at the back of Ian’s head. His eyes never left that red hair, and he continuously daydreamed about running his fingers through it. Today was different though; he forced himself to not think about Gallagher at all. And unfortunately, the only way to distract himself was to actually pay attention.

It was currently 10:45am, and Mickey was making his way to his Spanish class, probably his favourite class of the day. Mickey was actually good at Spanish and found it very easy to understand. Back at home, Mickey hung out with (and dealt to) a lot of guys who spoke Spanish. He would often listen in to their conversations with each other, and eventually began to pick up on and understand common phrases and certain slang words.

Mickey made his way into the classroom, instantly spotting Ian’s flaming hair sitting at the front of the room. Mickey noticed an empty seat near the back of the class, and made his way over to that one instead of his usual spot. His normal seat was only two spots away from Ian; somewhere he definitely did not want to be sitting.

The teacher walked into the class, a massive notebook in his hands, immediately after Mickey sat down in his seat. The teacher was a short man who always wore bright, printed shirts and had an extremely receding hairline. Mickey still didn’t know his name, and didn’t care to find out. Mickey wasn’t concerned with the names of people he didn’t care about; and he only cared enough to remember the names of a few select people.

The teacher walked through the rows of desks, handing a sheet of paper to each student. Practically throwing one at Mickey (you could tell he wasn’t the biggest fan of him), he picked it up and noticed the bolded letters of the top of the page that read “Test Review”. Mickey completely forgot that there was an upcoming translation test worth 25 percent of his final mark. He was fucked.

“Okay,” the teacher started, standing again at the head of the class, “Everyone pair up and work on your translations together. I want you all to be extremely prepared for this test, and speaking in Spanish to each other is a lot more helpful than simply writing it down.”

Everyone got out of their seats, and all began to disperse towards their friends. No one wanted to be partners with kids they didn’t know (or even worse, kids they hated).   
  
“Gallagher!” The teacher called out suddenly, smiling at the redhead with so much pride that it made Mickey sick. “Can you please partner up with Milkovich? God knows he needs guidance from someone like you.”  
  
Mickey glared at the teacher; his icy blue eyes practically burning holes through the teacher. The old man couldn’t have even been 5 ft 6 and had quite a bit of pudge on him. Mickey could take him easily and the teacher knew it. He quickly looked away from Mickey, and back to his star student, who was now smirking in Mickey’s direction.

“Sure, Mr. Walker, I’d be happy to.”

Mickey rolled his eyes at Gallagher’s cheerful tone; of course he’d be happy to have to sit with him for the next hour, translating stupid sentences about dogs and airplanes.

Ian pulled his chair up to Mickey’s desk, and pulled out a Spanish-to-English dictionary and his review sheet. Mickey pulled out his piece of shit cell phone as his translator; he didn’t own a dictionary and didn’t plan on it.

For the first few minutes, Mickey read the first half of the sentences out to Ian in Spanish, and he translated them back into English. Mickey noticed that he barely picked up his dictionary, the translations all coming from his memory. He knew he was smart, but for some reason, this surprised him.

It was Mickey’s turn to do the translating now, and he was confident enough in his Spanish that he wouldn’t have to use his dictionary (well, his phone) either. However, Ian was typing furiously on his phone, completely and totally engrossed by something. Mickey was beginning to get impatient. He wanted to finish this stupid review so he could go for a smoke.

Finally, Ian put his phone into his lap, and looked directly into Mickey’s eyes. He began to mumble out a sentence in Spanish quietly, not even needing to look at the review sheet for reference.  “Quiero tu polla en mi boca tan mal ahora.”

Mickey’s face contorted into a look of extreme confusion. He totally didn’t understand a word Gallagher just said. He picked up his review sheet, scanning the rows and rows of sentences.

“That sentence isn’t even on here, man.”

Ian just smirked at him, cocking his head to the side a little bit. Mickey more confused than ever, pulled out his phone and loaded up his translator. He quickly typed up the words he heard, and waited for the website to load. Once it had, Mickey’s face instantly reddened, and his pants suddenly got a little bit tighter. The website had loosely translated Ian’s sentence to “I want your cock in my mouth so bad right now.” 

Mickey sputtered and started to choke a little, completely baffled by what the redhead had just proclaimed to him. After regaining his breath a little, he looked up at the taller boy, who was smirking at him suggestively. Mickey looked around the classroom, and noticed that everyone was engrossed in their own work and conversations. No one had heard what had just gone down between the two boys, and for this Mickey was grateful. However, Ian was still smirking at Mickey and that made him extremely uncomfortable (in more ways than one), canceling out the gratitude he felt. All Mickey could think about now was his dick in Ian’s mouth; his hands slightly pulling the redhead’s hair as a sigh escaped from his own parted lips. He snapped out of the short but intense daydream, looking down at his pants and noticing a small bulge beginning to form. He instantly shot out of his seat, desperate to get away from the now-grinning Gallagher, and even more desperate to get to some place private. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” the teacher yelled at him as he gathered his shit and made his way towards the classroom door. He didn’t bother answering his teacher; he was in too much of a hurry and frankly didn’t care if the dickhead gave him detention or an F or whatever. He sprinted to the bathroom; his tightening pants clear evidence of the business he was going to attend to for the next couple minutes. Thank god for private bathrooms.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thanks so much for all the positive feedback and comments! I'm so glad you're all enjoying this story.  
> If you want keep updated on the next chapter, ect. then follow me on tumblr :) www.iangallagh3r.tumblr.com
> 
> ALSO, NEW EP OF SHAMELESS IS POSTED ONLINE IN 24 HOURS WHO ELSE IS STOKED AS HELL?


	13. The (Practically Non-Existant) Towel

The next few hours of class and training were absolutely torturous for Mickey. It was impossibly hard (no pun intended) for him to not look at Ian, who was sitting directly in front of him during most classes, without thinking about him. It was even harder considering he kept making subtle yet extremely sexual passes at him throughout the day. Mickey knew that Gallagher was just trying to break him. He clearly wanted to rattle him up so he’d just give in and admit that what happened at the party wasn’t just a result of the alcohol he had consumed. But Mickey refused to let that happen. No matter how hard it was, he was going to stay silent and not give in to any temptations.

Mickey decided to skip dinner that night, and instead chose to spend his time chain-smoking cigarettes at his usual spot against the wall. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stomach any food, and desperately needed a smoke and some time to himself. The dinner hour passed quickly, and students began to make their way towards the locker room to change for military training. Mickey took his cigarette out from between his lips (it was his 7th in the last hour) and threw it to the ground. Stepping on the bud to put it out, he slowly walked across campus and to the locker room. He was dreading the next 2 hours of training more than anything, knowing that Ian was going to be there wearing his tight muscle tee and army pants. ~~God, he looked so hot in those pants.~~

He contemplated skipping training, knowing that he’d _only_ get another 2 weeks of detention as punishment; and detention meant more time spent away from Gallagher. However, he knew he couldn’t possibly sit through even another minute of detention, and decided to suck it up and go to training. He quickly changed back into his training clothes, not wanting to be “tardy” and risk getting written up. These military dudes were strict as hell.

He sauntered his way over to where the rest of the cadets were, most of them already beginning to warm up and stretch. One of the guys informed Mickey on what the training entailed that night; getting into pairs and working on their “combat techniques” and “general fitness”. So basically, Mickey was going to punch some guy in the face all night, and he was always down for that. Mickey looked around the crowd of students, and spotted the tall, black-haired kid that he usually partnered up with for this kind of stuff.

“Hey, you ready to go?” he said, nodding his head towards him.

“Sorry Mick,” the kid said, shrugging his shoulders and ever so slightly backing away from the Milkovich boy. Even though the guy was a clear 5 inches taller than Mickey, he was obviously intimated by him. “I’m with Evans tonight.”

Mickey sighed, giving the kid the finger and stalking off to find someone else to beat up. Most of the guys already had partners, and Mickey was beginning to get extremely frustrated.

“Need a partner?” a voice from directly behind Mickey whispered in his ear. He knew that voice; he did not want to hear that voice right now. Mickey turned around to face Ian, who was standing practically on top of him. His hair was slightly pushed back, matted by sweat, and his t-shirt was clinging to his chest more than it usually did. Mickey gulped quite loudly, and hoped to god that Ian didn’t hear it.

“I’d rather punch myself in the face than have to spar with you for the next 2 hours.”

Ian laughed loudly, more like a roar than just a regular laugh. It annoyed Mickey how much he appreciated the redhead’s laugh.

“I’m surprised, actually.” Ian started, crossing his arms and narrowing his gaze at Mickey. “I thought you’d be excited to get to toss me around a bit. I know I’d be excited to toss you around…”

Ian’s grin, mixed with the intensity of his eyes in that moment, made it a little bit harder for Mickey to breathe. Mickey had to hand it to him; he really knew how to get to him.

“Actually, yeah, I’ll be your partner. Beating the absolute shit out of you is exactly what I need right now.” Mickey said with a sly little grin.

Ian smiled at him, stretching his long arms above his head. He continued to stretch and warm up for a few minutes, his shirt riding up ever so slightly as he did. Mickey knew that Ian would catch him staring, but he could not look away. The patch of skin exposed just over Ian’s army pants had Mickey thinking about what the rest of his body looked like without clothes on. When Mickey realized the horrible direction that his thoughts were headed in, he snapped out of it and cracked his knuckles loudly.

“Ready when you are.” He nodded in Ian’s direction, trying way too hardly to come off as nonchalant.

Without a second glance, Ian quickly made his way over to Mickey, knocking him off his feet and onto the ground with a simple punch. Mickey, completely stunned by what just happened, landed on his back. Ian was standing over him, looking down and smirking at what he just accomplished.

“Fuckin’ asshole.” Mickey muttered under his breath as he made his way to his feet, swinging his fist at Ian’s face. Ian blocked it, and the two continued to throw punches and jabs at each other for the next half an hour.

Finally, boys began to tire out a bit, and were in desperate need of water. Mickey went to swing at Ian, as nothing was more satisfactory to the brunette than getting the last punch in. Ian intercepted it, seeing it coming, and knocked Mickey to the ground once again. This time, however, he fell down with him, landing directly on top of him. Mickey instantly thought back to the last time this happened during training, a while back now. The sexual tension radiating between the two was just as intense as it had been before. Ian was staring directly into Mickey’s eyes, and Mickey simply could not look away. Both of their breaths were coming out in short, ragged spurts and Mickey could feel Ian’s chest moving on top of his own.

Ian broke their eye contact first, his own eyes drifting downwards toward Mickey’s stomach. When their gazes met again, Ian’s mouth curved into a small little smirk, his eyebrows arching ever so slightly. Suddenly, his hips began to slowly move against Mickey, grinding directly into his own hipbones. Mickey’s mouth opened into a small “o” shape, and his breathing began to increase.

Unfortunately, it ended as soon as it started. Ian stood up and smirked at the older boy who was still lying on the ground with a look of pure shock and lust on his face.  
  
“Good training session.” He smiled innocently at him as he turned to walk away, as if nothing had just happened. As if his fucking pelvic area hadn’t just grinded all over Mickey’s.

Mickey lifted his head slightly, and looked around the training area to see if anyone had noticed what just happened. He let out a sigh of relief as he noticed most people already gone, and the remaining cadets all facing away from him. He let his head fall back to the ground, remaining in place as he thought about how badly he wanted Ian to be on top of him again.

* * *

   
Mickey sat on his bed, viciously hitting the buttons on his video game controller and screaming profanities at the television. He had been playing his game for a good half an hour now, and was extremely close to completing the level he was on. He generally tried not to play video games while Gallagher was around; he couldn’t play without yelling at the TV and knew that it frightened and annoyed his roommate. Considering Ian was in the shower, and he took insanely long showers, he figured he’d have time to get in a level or two.

He only had to kill just one more guy to beat the level; he moved his player around the game, thinking about his next steps. If he died now, he had to restart the game. And that was not an option; he had to win. He found his fictional opponent, aiming his controller in the correct way and placing his fingers on top of the buttons. Just as he was about to press them and win the game, the door to the bathroom opened. Mickey’s eyes slightly looked towards the creaking door, where he thought he saw an almost naked Gallagher, and then quickly shifted back to the game.

Suddenly, he froze. He did a double take, once again looking at the practically naked boy standing in the doorframe of their shared bathroom. His arm was resting casually against the door hinge, and a small smirk started to form on his face. Mickey’s eyes travelled down from Ian’s face to his stomach region. It was completely bare; his hard and formed, yet still modest, abs were still wet from the shower. They were practically glistening, and Mickey had to force himself to look away.

Unfortunately for him, Mickey’s gaze shifted downward instead of up. The smallest hint of a towel (barely) covered Ian’s pelvic area. If it were just the slightest bit shorter, Mickey would’ve been able to see everything. He felt his cheeks begin to redden, and he found it hard to swallow. Mickey looked away, his eyes landing on the wall, trying to look anywhere but Ian. He was more than embarrassed and ashamed that he was basically just gawking at an almost-naked Ian for a good 4 minutes. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Ian was staring at him.

“What?” Mickey barked, turning to look at him. He would not give him the satisfaction of knowing Mickey was actually embarrassed.

“Like what you see?” Ian replied, cocking his head to the side a little.

Mickey stuttered, trying to make a smartass comment in response but couldn’t think of what to say. Ian fucking Gallagher was turning Mickey into everything he hated. He became red-faced and embarrassed around him, he forgot how to speak and worst of all, and he was making him less of a douche. Mickey _was_ a douche; he enjoyed being a douche.

Mickey’s eyes began to shift, trying his best to avoid looking at Ian. He had no idea what to even say to him, so he settled on the first words that came to mind.

“Fuck you.” He said, getting off the bed and storming out of their bedroom, slamming the door behind him. That was the best he could come up with…. Ian Gallagher was going to ruin his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter took so long! i've been a bit busy with school starting up again!
> 
> the next chapter should be up soon. I hope you're all excited because big things will be happening... things we've all been waiting for *hint hint*
> 
> thanks so much for all the love and positive feedback you've all been giving me and this fic. if you want updates on when the next chapter will be posted, make sure to follow me on tumblr! :) http://iangallagh3r.tumblr.com


	14. The Truth

Mickey paced up and down the hallway of his dorm. He had left his room a few hours ago, and decided that he needed to go for a run. He wasn’t the fastest of runners, but it always helped to clear his head and calm him down a little. That, and beating people up; but he decided against that tonight. He was at the point of anger where once he started beating on someone, he didn’t think he’d be able to stop. And quite honestly, Mickey wasn’t feeling jail time tonight.

Now here he was in the hall, sweat dripping down his forehead and soaking the front of his shirt, running through every single occurrence that could possibly happen once he entered his room. Maybe Ian wouldn’t even be there, and if he was, that didn’t mean Mickey needed to even talk to him. He reached into the front pocket of his sweatpants, pulling out his shitty, stolen iPod and placed the headphones into his ears. He took a deep breath, silently scolded himself for being such a huge pussy, and shoved the door to his room open.

Ian sat on the bed, knees bent close to his chest, reading his biology textbook. He was furiously highlighting something that must’ve been important; the lid to the highlighter hanging out of his mouth, stuck between his teeth. Mickey couldn’t help but notice how adorable he looked in that very moment.

As soon as Ian noticed Mickey’s presence, his head shot up. He pulled the cap out from his mouth, his lips curving upwards into a smile.

“You’re back,” he started, eyeing Mickey in a way that he was totally not comfortable with. Ian got up off his bed, and made his way towards the shorter brunette. “I was starting to think you were gonna sleep somewhere else tonight.”

By this point, Ian was way too close for Mickey’s liking. So close he could smell him. He smelled really fucking good; like soap and cologne. Mickey thought he also smelled a bit of weed, and wondered if Ian had been smoking while he was gone.

Mickey tilted his head slightly so he could look directly into Ian’s eyes. They were so green and nice and Mickey was beginning to forget what he wanted to say to him. Shit.

“No, I’m staying here. This is my room too. Look dude, you’ve got to stop this shit.”

“Stop what?” Ian smiled all innocently, but Mickey saw right through him. Ian reached out, running his fingers softly up and down Mickey’s arm. He let him for a second; sighing at how good it felt to be touched by him. However, he quickly snapped out of it, yanking his arm away quickly.

_“This!”_ Mickey screamed, gesturing his arms towards Ian wildly. “All of this. You have to stop Ian, I’m fucking tired of it. I’ve had enough.”

Mickey was full on yelling now; so loud that Ian stepped backward, evidently shocked by the outburst. 

“This needs to end now. I know you’re not used to people disliking you, and not paying attention to you or whatever. But you can’t just force someone into liking you, okay? Expecially when they don’t….” Mickey trailed off, knowing that the last sentence was a complete lie. All of it was a lie, actually, and Mickey knew that. But he also knew that it was way easier to deny his thoughts and feelings if Ian wasn’t tempting him 24/7.

Ian gulped loudly, clearly at a loss for words. His legs gave out, and he sank down onto his bed. His cracked his knuckles, and shifted his gaze towards the floor beneath him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was forcing you to like me, I truly thought you did….”

He swallowed, looking up at Mickey. “Look, let’s just go back to how things were before, okay? I won’t talk to you anymore, and we can go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”  
  
Ian looked so defeated; his shoulders were slouched as he ran a hand through his already messy hair. Mickey nodded at him, not knowing what else to say. He should be happy with the decision to “hate each other” again, but he couldn’t help but feel like it was the wrong decision.

He looked away from Ian; not being able to look at his sad, deflated expression without feeling sad himself. Mickey had never been one to worry about the feelings of others, but for some reason, he felt incredibly awful and guilty.

He heard the bed creak, and shifted his gaze slightly towards Ian. He was shoving stuff into an overnight bag; track pants, a tank top, his toothbrush, various pairs of boxers. Mickey watched him as he raced over to his desk, furiously shoving everything into a pile, and hauling it back over to his bed.

“What are you doing?” Mickey asked, his eyebrows raised.

“I’m gonna stay at Brian’s tonight. Or maybe Dave’s.” He replied as he continued to ram stuff into his bag.

“You don’t need to leave,” Mickey sighed, making his way over to Ian and grabbing his arm. Ian turned to face him, going to push his hand off. Mickey noticed, and instead grabbed the taller boy by the shoulders, pushing him roughly. “ Fuck Gallagher, stop it.”  
  
Ian pushed Mickey back, never the type to back down from a fight. “Fuck you, Mickey.”

Mickey glared at him in return, pushing him back so hard that his bag fell off the bed, stuff splattering all over their floor. The two boys were completely raging by now; both of them continuously shoving each other and breathing heavily. Mickey finally had enough, grabbing Ian by the shirt and forcing him backwards so hard that he end up slammed against the wall. Mickey was practically on top of him now; his hands resting flat against the wall beside Ian’s face and their chests touching. Mickey could feel Ian breathing; his breaths coming out ragged and heavy just like his own.

Both boys just stared at each other, neither of them blinking or moving an inch for a few good seconds. Mickey slowly moved his right hand off the wall, bringing it down towards Ian’s chest. He grabbed a fist full of Ian’s sweater, pulling him closer to him, if that was even possible. His heart beat quickened as he slightly raised himself up, so his mouth was leveled with Ian’s. He inched his face closer, stopping when their lips were just barely touching. He was so close to him that he could practically taste him. He could feel Ian’s pulse pick up, and could hear his heart beating.

After weeks, no months, of internal battles regarding his feelings, Mickey was just over it. He tried to not think about Ian, tried to ignore all his flirtatious comments and staring, tried to forget about the sexual tension; but he simply couldn’t. He wanted to fucking kiss Gallagher for real, and he was finally going to do it.

“No, fuck you.” He said, finally pressing his lips against Ian’s.

At first, Ian was too shocked to respond, his lips limp as Mickey practically attacked him. However, the shock wore off very quickly and Ian kissed him back hungrily. He ran his tongue along Mickey’s lips, who parted them in return, gladly welcoming him. The kiss got deeper, both boys moaning and getting more and more frantic. Ian moved his hands down to Mickey’s waist, while Mickey’s hands went to the other boy’s face. Mickey subconsciously pushed his hips up against Ian’s, grinding them together. He heard Ian groan in response, and was glad to know that he was dying for contact as much as he was.

Ian slid a hand up Mickey’s shirt, running his fingers up and down the other boy’s body. Mickey groaned in response, and deepened the kiss even further, grabbing a fistful of Ian’s hair.

The two continued to make out for quite some time, Ian being the one to finally pull away. Although their faces were no longer touching, their bodies were still smashed up against each other. Ian had his arms wrapped around Mickey’s waist, while Mickey moved his hand to push a stray hair out of Ian’s eyes.

Mickey could feel Ian’s breath on his lips, and wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. He leaned in slightly but Ian pushed him away; Mickey’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

A small (but adorable) laugh slipped from Ian’s mouth, as he eyed Mickey curiously. “I knew it.” He laughed again, shaking his head.

Mickey gave him the finger. “Yeah, yeah. Shut the fuck up.” He reached for Ian, pressing his lips against his once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayyyyyy it finally happened hahah. However, even though Mickey finally (technically) admitted his feelings for Ian, doesn't mean all will be swell in ian x mickey land (oooooo shit)
> 
> next chapter should be up as soon as possible!   
> thanks for reading guys!
> 
> hit me up on tumblr if ya want: http://iangallagh3r.tumblr.com :)


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